Starting Chromium to go to a specific site

prioret

I have chromium running on Retropie, and I would like to send chromium to a specific site. The plan is to make several entries in gamelist.xml and have a script per site.

When starting Chromium you can pass a URL and Chromium would launch that site. For example in bash if you run:

chromium https://www.spotify.com

Chromium will launch and start with the Spotify home page.

I was reading the docs and code and it looks like runcommand.sh is used to start Chromium. The runcommand.sh comments call out:

runcommand.sh VIDEO_MODE COMMAND SAVE_NAME

Where in this case the command is 'chromium'

#!/bin/bash
"/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 _PORT_ "chromium" ""

I edited it to be:

#!/bin/bash
"/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 _PORT_ "chromium http://www.spotify.com" ""

When it runs I get an error:

No config found for system chromium http://www.spotify.com

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

sleve_mcdichael

@prioret In the launch script:

Chromium - Open Source Web Browser.sh:

"/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 _PORT_ "chromium" ""

...note the final, empty pair of quotes. This is the "%ROM%" parameter, that will be passed by the front-end EmulationStation to the launch utility runcommand and ultimately to the application. This is where we could put the URL. Try making a copy of this script and put a URL between the final quotes, ex:

chromium_test.sh:

"/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 _PORT_ "chromium" "https://retropie.org.uk/forum"

In the runcommand emulator config file:

/opt/retropie/configs/ports/chromium/emulators.cfg:

chromium="XINIT: /opt/retropie/supplementary/chromium/chromium.sh"
default="chromium"

...note that it's not using the %ROM% parameter at all. Edit the chromium= line to add %ROM% at the end so it reads:

chromium="XINIT: /opt/retropie/supplementary/chromium/chromium.sh %ROM%"

Finally, in the file /opt/retropie/supplementary/chromium/chromium.sh:

#!/bin/bash
xset -dpms s off s noblank
matchbox-window-manager -use_titlebar no &
/usr/bin/chromium-browser

...edit the /usr/bin/chromium-browser line to add "$@" at the end so it reads:

/usr/bin/chromium-browser "$@"

This $@ var stands in for "all arguments passed to this script" which, because of emulators.cfg is %ROM% which, because of chromium_test.sh is the URL (you could also pass any other command-line options here, too.)

Restart EmulationStation and try launching the chromium_test item. If it worked, it should open the RetroPie forum homepage.

prioret

@sleve_mcdichael said in Starting Chromium to go to a specific site:

It worked perfectly!
Thanks!

Matt_B50

@prioret hi, a bit off topic but how do you install chromium? Not finding many recent answers on Google.

sleve_mcdichael

@Matt_B50 chromium is available in the external RetroPie-Extra project:

https://github.com/Exarkuniv/RetroPie-Extra

Matt_B50

@sleve_mcdichael Thank you!

Matt_B50

This is great! I have got it running in kiosk mode by adding "--kiosk" before the URL (as a separate parameter)

One question - any way to hid the mouse cursor when this starts? Tried setting use_cursor to no on matchbox-window-manager but that doesn't stop it (in /opt/retropie/supplementary/chromium/chromium.sh)