Retropie 4.x on Odroid C2

roleo

@Bahn-Yuki
You do not need to download and build manually libsdl.
The script does it for you when you build retroarch and/or emulationstation.
But if you have the 2.0.4+4mali version like me, it's ok.

Bahn Yuki

I wonder what the issue is then. Out of curiousity, what resolution are you using? I'm using the 2160p:420 mode. It works fine in MATE, but could that be a problem for Emulationstation or KODI? KODI won't run either.

roleo

@Bahn-Yuki
What is the exact message error?
I'm using 1080p60 and I didn't try Kodi.

Bahn Yuki

@roleo
lvl0: Error creating SDL window!
mali-fbdev: Can't create EGL window surface
lvl0: Renderer failed to initialize!
lvl0: Window failed to initialize!

BuZz

@Bahn-Yuki if you are having an issue on the odroid-c2 I will need some detailed information. How did you install retropie. Are you running from console (After exiting the desktop etc).

ElementZero

@Bahn-Yuki said in Retropie 4.x on Odroid C2:

@roleo
lvl0: Error creating SDL window!
mali-fbdev: Can't create EGL window surface
lvl0: Renderer failed to initialize!
lvl0: Window failed to initialize!

Yes, this is the error I was getting. I had installed RetroPie using just

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git
sudo MAKEFLAGS="-j1" ./retropie_setup.sh

on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS x64 Minimal and after the install the above error is the result when I try to start EmulationStation. Obviously with the Minimal install I don't even have a desktop, just the console. I think the problem is because there is no window manager installed either (?) but I haven't had time to go back and try to fix this yet

BuZz

@ElementZero It doesn't run from the desktop but from console - no X/window manager needed.

DavisDS85

I have to say how super excited I am to see development on the C2. I love this board and I LOVE retroPie.

I've read several articles but all are dated, and ultimately people just gave up.

Crossing fingers on this one!

What base image are you guys using?

BuZz

@DavisDS85 I did initial development/testing on the hardkernel Ubuntu 16.04 image (which is aarch64 so many arm optimisations are lost). I will be looking at supporting a 32bit base also.

ElementZero

@BuZz said in Retropie 4.x on Odroid C2:

@ElementZero It doesn't run from the desktop but from console - no X/window manager needed.

Oh ok - the error message had led me to believe it might have been the window manager but like I said I didn't have a chance to look into it yet. Well let me know if you need me to try something then - would there be a log or a way to debug more info from the error message?

BuZz

@ElementZero I would need a complete install log and errors (you said you are getting the same error as above, but I would prefer you copy and paste your exact error should there be a slight difference) - make sure you are not running from the desktop.

Also if you did anything else regarding installing 3rd party SDL2 libraries etc.

DavisDS85

So far, in your experience, is there any significant performance gains?

I was hoping to leverage the twice as much ram on game processing, but I've read some conflicting reports that the performance isn't as much as you'd think due to the GPU?

BuZz

@DavisDS85 the extra ram isn't going to help with performance. some emulators are still not supported on aarch64/mali. I wouldn't rush out to get an Odroid-c2 just for RetroPie.

DavisDS85

Too late.. I got over-zelous I guess. Made one of these into a portable webserver and it bench-marked amazing..

Next chance I had, I got another one. Problem is, I gave away my Pi2 for Christmas because I "just knew" this would work. Now I'm stuck with about $150 all in on a C2 with a 64GB Emmc (4 times the write speed). Just hoping I can make it work.

BuZz

@roleo just tested on a clean minimal Ubuntu 16.04 image and autostart worked fine (ES was started on boot). If you are having trouble I will need some help to reproduce it (step by step from a fresh image etc).

ElementZero

@BuZz said in Retropie 4.x on Odroid C2:

@roleo just tested on a clean minimal Ubuntu 16.04 image and autostart worked fine (ES was started on boot). If you are having trouble I will need some help to reproduce it (step by step from a fresh image etc).

I'm wondering - all I had basically done was loaded the minimal then do an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and then installed retropie using the script and then I had the errors loading ES. I had some issues with apt-get upgrade though (and this morning I tried it and it breaks the boot partition). After reading on the forum it looks like there is some problems with the build of the minimal so I'm actually trying the mate now.

Anyways just curious if in your build where ES lauched fine did you run the apt-get upgrade first? Maybe some file is breaking there...

BuZz

@ElementZero I didn't update first. I just created an odroid user on the minimal image, and added the user to the video/sudo/input groups - I then used that user to install retropie-setup.

ElementZero

ok - yeah that's basically exactly what I had done the first time except I did the upgrade first. Let me try on mine without doing the upgrade and see if it just works, if so then it would seem the upgrade does something funky (which wouldn't be surprising seeing the errors during upgrade and other forum posts about it).

First though I'm going to finish this install w/ the mate image and see if that runs fine. Apparently there is no problem with doing the upgrade/dist-upgrade with the mate image and it does not give the depmod errors about the kernel version.

roleo

@BuZz
Ok, I will try again tomorrow.

ElementZero

@ElementZero Unfortunately I had to put this on hold since my HDMI port apparently broke.

I can say that the minimal image IS broken if you do apt-get but apparently it's caused by u-boot being bad so if you hold that back then the upgrade is just fine.