ES lag after updating underlying OS

pjft · 13 Jul 2017, 16:05

I personally avoid updating anything unless there's anything I really need.

I mostly update EmulationStation, sometimes a few emulators, but the underlying OS is a trickier proposition without a backup. I've heard stories of PS3 controllers no longer pairing, etc, so in my case, if it isn't broken, I won't touch it. :)

Riverstorm · 13 Jul 2017, 16:09

@pjft said in ES lag after updating underlying OS:

I personally avoid updating anything unless there's anything I really need.

Ok thanks pjft I was never quite sure so I'll leave it in the future unless specified. That seems to be the longest part of updating it all anyway. :)

theWinterDojer · 13 Jul 2017, 16:10

@pjft Is updating the underlying OS the same as running:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

I normally run that above, then update all packages without updating underlying OS. Wondering if I can skip that first step and just select "yes" to updating underlying OS.

BuZz · 13 Jul 2017, 16:11

@thewinterdojer yes.

theWinterDojer · 13 Jul 2017, 16:13

@buzz I think I may have asked that before, my apologies if I did, but thank you!

gaavoid · 13 Jul 2017, 18:23

@pjft ES version is the newest binary (2.4.1? Sorry not at home to check). Haven't touched the vram limit which I think is set to 100. Pi isn't overclocked. I have about 20 or 25 systems, which is fine with all themes tested without updating the OS.
However with the updated OS, older less ram instensive themes like pixel/carbon were fine except for scrolling through games lists where I would experience 5-10 second freezes. My ROMs are fully scraped too, so might be more of an issue loading the scraped images or metadata (this was worse/more frequent when using retrorama/comic book).
The white screen isn't the same as the old white screen of death we used to get. It's just white for the image of the one system. Scrolling back to it seems to make it reappear so seems like a ram issue.
With comic book theme, the outline for the comic frame was still there but no images, just the name of the system on the carousel.

I did test some ROMs on Neo-Geo and PC-Engine and they seemed to work just fine.

theWinterDojer · 13 Jul 2017, 18:32

@gaavoid I updated the OS last night and have about 2,000 titles scraped, and I have not experienced any slow down or lag when browsing the menus. It could be because of all the systems you have, I remember reading before that scraping too many ROMs can lead to slowdown when shutting down or quitting but thankfully I have not had that happen to me yet. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can chime in.

gaavoid · 13 Jul 2017, 18:34

@thewinterdojer start up and shut down time is fine for me on the previous OS version but was slower on the updated one. I forgot about that.

What image/RP version have you built from?

gaavoid · 13 Jul 2017, 18:41

Also, not sure if it matters, I have an edited es_themes file with extra themes like supergrafx and pc-engine/turbografx 16 set as separate systems; same with genesis/mega-drive, SNES/SFC etc, each set up with their own config file.

theWinterDojer · 13 Jul 2017, 18:50

@gaavoid I'm sorry if I don't understand your question exactly, but my initial Pie install was done on the latest 4.2 image. Do you mean my Raspbian version?

pjft · 13 Jul 2017, 18:55

@gaavoid thanks. Try reducing VRAM to 80 and see if it helps with the white screens. Was everything scraped and working well prior to the update?

Do you have everything running from an SD card? It might be that the SD card got corrupted, if it is a data IO issue.

We'll see.

gaavoid · 13 Jul 2017, 19:15

@pjft yes worked perfectly as it is now without updating the OS. Everything is running from a sandisk ultra 64gb micro SD.
I think I'll stick with using the previous OS version from the initial 4.2 update as it all seems good. Then when we get round to a 4.3 release I'll setup a new build from scratch as I feel it could be a conflicting issue from building it from 4.1.
Through SSH, is there a log I can access with the terminal info that was on screen during the update? I remember reading there was a file that couldn't be removed and it wasn't empty. This happened each time I updated the OS. There was also something in the update that said 'unstable' but I really don't remember what it was. If I can get that log, I'll update the OS to recreate the issue and post here.

Tundra · 13 Jul 2017, 19:34

@gaavoid The exact shit happened too me they might need to test updates privately before throwing them to the public now they have more to work on then they updated but however I will admit they finally did the favorites and that is a 👍👍👍

gaavoid · 13 Jul 2017, 19:39

@tundra Emulation station isn't the issue exactly here. The newest ES for retropie is working perfectly on the raspbian version that was current for when retropie 4.2 was released, but now having issues with an updated version of raspbian which is available to download/update through the retropie setup since at least 4.2.8 (now 4.2.10) when selecting update all packages/update underlying OS (kernels etc).

gaavoid · 13 Jul 2017, 20:17

I've figured out where the terminal logs are. I'm going to reflash my 4.2 build and update everything. It will take a while, but will post when it's done.

gaavoid · 17 Jul 2017, 00:45

@pjft After a few shutdowns and reboots, the lag seems to have stopped when scrolling through the game lists (not sure why this was necessary). Also, good advice on changing the vram limit to 80: this stops the white screens happening. I did save the log but seems redundant to post now, as everything seems ok.

Thanks for the help.

Also, just a query. Does adjusting the vram limit in ES affect retroarch in anyway?

I'm guessing the white screens occur when there's not enough memory to load the images when scrolling quickly through the systems.

pjft · 17 Jul 2017, 10:41

@gaavoid Thanks for the update - good to hear you're not having many more problems these days.

The VRAM setting doesn't affect RetroArch in any way - when you exit EmulationStation, all textures will be unloaded from memory, so the emulators have access to as much memory as possible. That's also why sometimes after returning to ES from an emulator you may see some images missing and loading for a split-second - as it's trying to load everything back at once.

The white screen would happen in the past when trying to load images when scrolling quickly through the systems. It shouldn't happen in principle these days, though I know of a place where it does, after a recent change, and I have that on my shortlist to address.

I have no clue as to why the lag would have stopped after a few shutdowns and reboots, honestly.

I may get VRAM to be set to 80 as a default, and truth be told we should be able to limit that as every now and then I read about people setting it to 300 or so which is just a recipe for disaster.

gaavoid · 17 Jul 2017, 11:27

@pjft I always thought increasing the vram would increase the amount of images loaded at once and improve ES performance. In fact before I asked this question here, I did increase it to 200 to see the results and ES basically crashed .
I wouldn't have thought to reduce it until you suggested it.
80 as default is a good idea.

theWinterDojer · 17 Jul 2017, 12:33

@gaavoid Updating all packages and kernel worked alright? I wanted to update today but didn't want to risk breaking anything if the current OS version is conflicting somehow.

gaavoid · 17 Jul 2017, 13:11

@thewinterdojer Honestly seems fine. When updating it was stuck on -

"Unpacking raspberrypi-kernel-headers (1.20170703-1) over (1.20170303-1)"

for over an hour, so just warning it'll take some time.

Directly after that had finished the next line was -

"dpkg: warning: unable to delete old directory '/lib/modules/4.4.50-v7+': Directory not empty"

Not sure if that's anything to be concerned about (anyone?).

Other than this, the OS update installed fine, and after shutting down the system (twice I think) there was no lag. It could be that when I updated previously, something went wrong (or maybe I didn't shut down my Pi after and I assumed something was wrong).
I had about 1.8gb of space left on my 64gb micro sd. The last (final) time I reflashed my image and updated, I deleted all of my FBA roms as there is a new rom set for the newest FBA. I don't know if freeing up more space is the reason the lag stopped but is a factor to think about.

However, it does seem necessary to reduce the vram limit in ES to 80 when using themes like comicbook and retrorama. Pixel is fine on 100.
This didn't seem to be needed on the previous OS version, but I may not have done enough testing to realise the issue was present there too.