Saving Fast Forward/Achievements in retroarch.cfg

[Used2BeRX]

@meleu Hey bud. You wouldn't mind showing me what your .bashrc file looks like, wouldya?

Before I figured out that it was a hidden file and I could have made a copy via FTP I edited it and now I get an error saying "line 266: syntax error: unexpected end of file".

I've been trying to find a copy of it on Google for about 20 minutes and haven't found one yet.

[meleu]

@Used2BeRX I'm away from my pi and will be for the next 12 hours. Maybe it's better you post your .bashrc so we can check what's wrong.

Post it in http://codepad.org/ (select the "Plain Text" at the left of text box). It could be pastebin or something, but I'm behind a restrictive proxy...

[Used2BeRX]

@meleu I remembered that I had a good version on the Pi image that I screwed up, so I was able to get it to work again. It was from RetroPie 4.1, but I checked both files out on diffchecker.com and they were the same except for this line:
"${bfgred} ..${bfgwht}||${bfgred}.. "
" ${bfgred}..${bfgwht}||${bfgred}.. "

Looks like I somehow put a few spaces before the $. It's super hard for me to edit anything on my TV screen even with the font made larger because the first 5-7 characters are cut off the left side of the screen.

I still can't figure out how to get the setfont command to work though.

I'm editing the file /home/pi/.bashrc

I put the following line at the end of the document:

setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/Lat15-TerminusBold20x10.psf.gz

Do I still use that line in .bashrc? And if I do, where should I put it?

Thanks. :)

[meleu]

@Used2BeRX our friend @backstander said above that he needed to put a sudo before setfont. Try it and see. ;-)

[Used2BeRX]

@meleu Yeah. He said he needed to put the sudo before setfont just to get the command to work in the Linux console. He asked you how to make that permanent and you said you added the command to your /.bashrc, but you were on a trip and away from your computer so you didn't ever get back to him how to do it.

I've never had to use sudo in front of setfont in the Linux console. The command works fine without it.

Whether I put that command with or without sudo in /.bashrc though either nothing happens or it "breaks" /.bashrc and gives me errors.

[meleu]

@Used2BeRX can you please do the following?:

cat ~/.bashrc > mybashrc.txt

It will create a file named mybashrc.txt. Get the file through FTP (which seems to be the method you're used to use), open it, copy'n'paste its contents in http://codepad.org/ (select the "Plain Text" at the left of text box). And then paste the URL here.

[Used2BeRX]

@meleu "~/.bashrc" didn't work with a "file not found", but "/home/pi/bashrc" worked.

Here's the link: http://codepad.org/vU0lktOT

This is the clean working version without an attempt at a setfont command.

[meleu]

@Used2BeRX said in Saving Fast Forward/Achievements in retroarch.cfg:

@meleu "~/.bashrc" didn't work with a "file not found", but "/home/pi/bashrc" worked.

bingo! The file MUST be named /home/pi/.bashrc (the ~ char is shortcut to your home directory, as you are the user pi, it means /home/pi).

If you would like to know what is the purpose of this file, maybe this link can help:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/129143/what-is-the-purpose-of-bashrc-and-how-does-it-work

[backstander]

@Used2BeRX
I quickly compared my .bashrc with your bashrc and they look pretty much identical. One note though, it is named incorrectly and needs the period at the first of the name. Without the period the system won't find it. Unix (Linux & Mac OS X) will put a period at the beginning of a filename to make it a "hidden file". Windows and DOS usually doesn't like this and if you try to edit a file named this way, Windows will remove the period.

To fix/rename the file you'll want to type something like this from the command line:

mv ~/bashrc ~/.bashrc

[backstander]

@Used2BeRX
In Unix, the ~/ is simular to what Windows does for %USERPROFILE% or %HOMEPATH%.

My first computer ran MS-DOS (Windows 3.1) (remember having to make special boot disks to play games?) but I was first introduced to Linux back in 1997 by a Computer Science friend of mine. I also will be turning 40 this year. I personally like RetroPie because it is so customizable but like @meleu said, Recalbox (which is very similar to RetroPie) is much easier to use and setup but not nearly as customizable as RetroPie. Think of RetroPie kind of like Android and Recalbox kind of like iOS.

I do agree that some background is programming might make learning Linux a little easier but I think if you stick with it , you'll be navigating Linux like a pro faster than you think!

[Used2BeRX]

@backstander @meleu I'm sorry guys. That was a typo. the file is named /home/pi/.bashrc

It does have the period. I did edit it on my Windows PC and send it back, but I didn't edit it in Explorer. I edited it with WinSCP, and it didn't remove the period.

Any idea how I can put a line or two in there to get the system to load with a bigger font by default?

EDIT:

I figured it out! I'm going to write up a guide on how to do it and I'll link it here when I'm done. :)

EDIT2: Here's the guide. Thanks guys.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11030/instructions-how-to-permanently-enlarge-alter-font-and-font-size

[backstander]

@Used2BeRX
Nice tutorial! Lat15-TerminusBold28x14.psf.gz does look even better! Now I can see while sitting on the couch!

Just to make it more readable for newbies, you might put the code in markdown code blocks. Here's the documentation about it:
http://commonmark.org/help/

[Used2BeRX]

@backstander @meleu I added something after you guys saw the instructions that you're going to want to keep in mind if you try this out.

IMPORTANT ADDENDUM:

Some programs may not play nice with the larger size. I found that jstest (for testing your joysticks) does not work right with a TerminusBold font size greater than 20x10. Every time you press a button it writes a new line on the screen with the output instead of just switching on and off like designed.

You have two options here.

1. Keep the text size permanently the way you like it and just remember to enter the setfont command to a size small enough for jstest (or other problem programs).

2. Bring the font size down to 20x10 or whatever necessary with a different font and you don't have to remember the setfont line.

Personally, I would go for number 1. Using jstest is the only time I've noticed this to be a problem and I don't imagine I'll be using it often. I'd much rather have the text on the screen very large 100% of the time until the few times I would need to change it.

[Used2BeRX]

@backstander Good call. It looks a lot better now.

Glad I could help you out. Pretty damn sweet, huh?

[backstander]

@Used2BeRX

Pretty damn sweet, huh?

Yes it is and it looks like @meleu is in the process of adding this to the official RetroPie wiki/docs.

[Used2BeRX]

@backstander Nice. :)

Now all I have to do is get my Pi back to where it was before I broke Sudoers and see if I can actually get the retroarch.cfg files to save and work properly. Almost forgot that's what this thread was originally about.