Solution for " White Screen of Death "
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@fieldofcows Ahhh thanks dude, so I have too choose between hi res images and having a screen saver :)
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so I have too choose between hi res images and having a screen saver :)
@__Scannigan__ For now, at least. @fieldofcows is working hard on getting all of those features into the main branch, but we need to make sure they are as well tested as possible before he can submit them for review. @fieldofcows is just a volunteer developer, doing this for fun- it's not his job to support EmulationStation or RetroPie. The current maintainers of the RetroPie version of EmulationStation are @Buzz and @herb_fargus I believe. Since they are also just doing this for fun and not profit, we have to make sure that any changes to the system we give them won't make their lives harder by breaking things :).
TLDR: Patience :). Once all the bugs are worked out (which requires more beta testing from users like you- thanks for helping to test!), it will eventually get into the official builds.
For anyone else who is observing these threads and has been following the work @fieldofcows has been doing, I encourage you to help test his work, that way he can find more bugs and fix them more quickly. He's a magician, but perhaps not quite a miracle worker :).
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@MWGemini Cheers dude, I've pushed this and since added more systems and I can't seem to break it
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I've now tried this on my Raspberry Pi 1. I forgot how slow they are! It took hours to compile then I realised I had used the wrong base image then had to wait again. Anyway...
It works well. Tronky theme loaded with 500Mb of images, maximum set to 100Mb in the UI and no WSOD. Carousel images were all preloaded and worked without delay. System images took a couple of seconds to load if paged out.
With a smaller theme there was no evidence of having to load/unload so no delays.
All seems to be OK :)
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@fieldofcows Fantastic! I've only got a Pi3, so I'm sorry I can't help with testing more than I've been able to so far.
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Ok so it's done. I've submitted the PR. I hope there has been enough testing to shake out any problems but if anyone is willing or able to do a bit more testing then it would really be appreciated.
What I would really like to see is the fixed version being tried on existing configurations to make sure they still work without issue.
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@fieldofcows What's next on the TODO list? And how can I help?
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What's next on the TODO list?
Champagne and cigars ;). Congratulations to everyone involved on seeing this through. This is definitely a milestone achievement and it is much appreciated.
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@MWGemini said in Solution for " White Screen of Death ":
What's next on the TODO list?
Either omxplayer for video, video screensaver or back to metadata. After a beer or two.
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@fieldofcows Happy to help with any of those. I can drop-ship you a case of your favorite as a gesture of appreciation :).
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Now I've got the hang of all this ( really enjoying learning about the back end of it) I'm happy to help if I can
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@MWGemini said in Solution for " White Screen of Death ":
I can drop-ship you a case of your favorite as a gesture of appreciation :).
Haha! Very kind thanks but you might be a bit premature. There seem to be a couple of issues to solve with the WSOD fix.
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@fieldofcows What did I miss?
Edit: Nevermind, found the discussion for it: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/pull/86
Is there anything I can do to help narrow this one down?
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@MWGemini It's been a busy weekend so I've only just had a chance to look at this. The carbon theme issue wasn't too hard to fix. Hopefully the WSOD fix will be back in soon.
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@fieldofcows Understandable. Same for me, actually. I just saw the PR updates with your new fix. If you get time to put a new release together, I can run through some more tests. I also need to set aside some time to test the video stuff too.
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OMG WOW GUYS!!!
I've not actually visited the forums in a few weeks. I got my system working and have been working on a way to get the games that work in RetroAchievments to work, so my visitations have been mostly on THAT site. So I'm in the middle of scraping some games (romhacks that weren't included in my original set) and I saw this thread. Just finished reading through it. All I can say is that ^^^^^ just.. wow.
I'm eager to try this out as well. I currently have 31 systems on my Rpi3 setup. I've not bothered getting heavy into the video previews side of things yet because none of the available themes that support them were capable of working with all my systems. Now that this HUGE STEP forward is more or less tested and working, I can't wait to get my hands on it and maybe test further for you.
So before I do anything, I'm (of course) going to make a backup image of my existing SD card. Then, what do I do? I'd like to avoid starting from scratch again because I have a lot of customization on my system. Specifically, I'm using some xboxdrv joystick remapping and all of my roms are stored on an attached USB HD. So I think the first thing that needs to happen is the modification of the memory split right? It looks like the modifications to ES though were made so you don't have to do that. I just want to know where to begin. After that, is it a simple matter of using RetroPie's built in setup menus to update from source the latest EmulationStation? I'm not sure about that since most of the instructions leading up to where we are say it needs done manually in the terminal; but then it says you pushed the PR fix..
I just want to test it further using official means, if that's where it's at now. I can go back after installing the update and re-download various themes to test.
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Hi @hansolo77,
Others can probably advise you better on backing up your system to ensure nothing breaks when trying this but, yes the fix is now included in the 'official' version which you can update to using the retropie menu to update from source.
I'm not sure how many others have tried and tested this so always appreciate any feedback on whether it is working correctly for you or not.
Good luck :)
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@fieldofcows said in Solution for " White Screen of Death ":
Hi @hansolo77,
Others can probably advise you better on backing up your system to ensure nothing breaks when trying this but, yes the fix is now included in the 'official' version which you can update to using the retropie menu to update from source.
I'm not sure how many others have tried and tested this so always appreciate any feedback on whether it is working correctly for you or not.
Good luck :)
Is this the actual EmulationStation package, or is it another package that needs to be updated?
I see the ES release dates on the site appear to be older still. Just checking.
Thanks.
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i think this one actually gives you the used vram
sudo vcdbg reloc |grep "\[" | awk '{split($0,a," "); print a[12]}' | awk '{split($0,a,","); print a[1]}' | awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum}'if i do
sudo vcdbg reloci get to see
Relocatable heap version 4 found at 0x1f000000 total space allocated is 492M, with 490M relocatable, 2.3M legacy and 0 offline 1 legacy blocks of size 2359296 free list at 0x3db120c0 349M free memory in 58 free block(s) largest free block is 332M bytes 0x1f000000: legacy block 2.3M 0x1f240000: free 332Mso it's tell me i have 349M free of ram
if i do (notice edited to show in MB the /1024/1024 part with sum)
sudo vcdbg reloc |grep "\[" | awk '{split($0,a," "); print a[12]}' | awk '{split($0,a,","); print a[1]}' | awk '{sum+=$1}END{print sum/1024/1024}'gives me 140.709 (MB)
so 140.709 + 349 gives me 489.709 which pretty much equals "490M relocatable"
that's why i think it shows you the used ram while the 1st one can be used to see the free ram
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Just wanted to updated quickly with my experience. Using a Pi3 without any modifications to the memory split. I started by downloading a couple of themes using the built in ES THEMES menu. I've used this method in the past and selected themes I know were giving me problems in the past (Zoid and Tronkyfran for instance). I then exited ES THEMES and went to RetroPie Setup and installed (from source) the updated Emulation Station. I then rebooted from within the Setup menus. Once it was fully loaded back up, I changed the theme from within Emulation Station (Press Start, go to UI Settings, Theme is the last option).
First theme I tried was Luminous. It is the prettiest theme available that has all the artwork required for my system. Although it uses icons (favorites, etc) from the "other" custom build of Emulation Station. (Speaking of which, any chance of merging those options into this one?). At first, the screen was white while the ES theme selector menu was still on the screen. After that closed out, the screen refreshed and displayed the theme. Everything worked great. I even experimented with quick scrolling as it was reported to be a potential bug, but I didn't have any issues.
The next theme I tried was Tronkyfran. This one I was eager to see what would happen because the background images for each system are rather large. I'm happy to report that it worked perfectly as well. I did notice a slight, maybe half second lag when it was rendering the background images some times. It would be a white background for an instant then the image would actually load. Not noticeable if you didn't know it wasn't supposed to work like that. The only issue I have with this theme is that it doesn't have all the system images for systems I have. Namely GENESIS (probably need to have it listed as MEGA DRIVE), WonderSwans, and a couple others I can't remember. I'm sure this is easily resolved. I don't like the way this theme has a very small, almost thumbnail sized image/screenshot for the games though, so I probably won't actually use it.
The last theme I tried was Zoid. It had a lot of similar characteristics as the Tronkyfran theme does. Everything is working but every now and then there is a slight glitch where the white background shows but is quickly rendered over with the correct background image. This is all while on the main home screen. Inside the various systems, everything works like it should. Again, this one has very small images for game art, so I probably won't be using it either.
All-in-all, I'm very impressed. The problem seems to be solved for the most part. Just that minor millisecond glitch of displaying a white screen before loading the background image. But as I said, it's only noticeable if you know it's not supposed to be there. It's an excellent fix!
Now on to finding a theme I really like. I'd like to get one with video previews but I'm not sure what themes are available. I asked in the Video Previews thread but so far nobody's responded. I know the "Old Room" theme is available, but it looks like it will require a bit of extra work to make it work right. Using the UXS scraper I can get the videos, but I don't know about the other artwork that his theme uses.
Hope that's a helpful documentation of my experience for you @fieldofcows .. Let me know if you would like any further information. Way to go buddy!
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