mame.ini ignored in lr-mame on ubuntu 23.04

TeeAce

I installed retropie on ubuntu 23.04...
I installed lr-mame and it works great...
I setup the core option "boot to OSD" to "ON", so in mame I can go in "general settings/configure folders/roms/add folder", I choose the folder where I stock every game bios, I press TAB and save settings...

This process seems to be working because I find a mame.ini file in the "bios/mame/ini/" directory with the added folder

"rompath home/teeace/RetroPie/roms/arcade;/home/teeace/RetroPie/roms;/home/teeace/RetroPie/roms/arcade/bios"

BUT, when I test a game that uses a bios file (for exemple "alien vs predator" that uses "qsound_hle.zip") it doesn't boot :-(

So I return to mame settings and I see that the rom folder that I added before isn't there. So the mame.ini file seems to be ignored.

For information, I set the core option "Read configuration" to "ON"

The idea to copy game bios files in an added folder works great in mame on my Windows 10 PC.

Ashpool

@TeeAce AFAIK you have to enable read config from the core options, but there are some settings within the ini files that lr-mame won't utilize and path settings are among them IIGIR. Apparently lr-mame (current) is ignoring some settings that have to be provided via the retro-arch api/chain-of-command/configs (I guess to avoid conflicts between the two).

TeeAce

@Ashpool

So if I understand, "lr-mame" ignore the rompath in the mame.ini but seams to use 2 paths instead:
/home/teeace/RetroPie/roms/arcade;
/home/teeace/RetroPie/roms

Well is there another way to tell to lr-mame where are the roms (for lr-mame to find the game bioses)?

I must admmit that I don't really know what is "the retro-arch api/chain-of-command/configs" ;-)

Ashpool

@TeeAce Yup, by default roms/arcade and roms/mame-libretro

From citing its core-info: [3] The BIOS files must be inside the ROM directory
Sorry, I thought that it is possible to add directorys to cores search path via some config, but I couldn't find anything in this regard at the moment :/ Maybe it was just some mixed up memory and I got that one wrong. I guess, among other things, that this is one reason why it is recommended to use unmerged/non-split sets with retropie.

Folly

It's possible to add and change rompaths in the runcommand loader.

This is a full example from what is installed with my module-script :

lr-mame-basename = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch --config /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg --appendconfig /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg.basename -S /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade -s /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade -v -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mame/mamearcade_libretro.so 'mame  -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/lr-mame -c -ui_active -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/ '%BASENAME%''"

You probably can use parts from above runcommand to add the rompaths to your runcommand.
I would focus on this part :

'mame  -cfg_directory /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/lr-mame -c -ui_active -rompath /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS/mame;/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/ '%BASENAME%''

Or you can use my project and ,depending on what you install, use the rompaths that are generated for the specific system or category.

Edit:
Also read this for using commandline options :
https://docs.mamedev.org/commandline/commandline-all.html