How to restart ES from a script?

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy looks like a problem on your script, because I tested my solution to restart ES using a script inside RetroPie Menu with only the command yo restart es and everything runs flawlessly several times in a row.

cyperghost

@meleu --- wrong ---
Sorry wrong issue

@TMNTturtlguy
But I also think that it has something to do with your script because all solutions posted by meleu, @BuZz and mine results in the same mechanism to kill one specific process.

Not more not less

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy @cyperghost prepare for another EUREKA moment. :-)

However I still have issue when pressing start to go to the menu and then to either restart ES or shudown system. In both cases it just flashing my script and then restarts ES. The only way to get rid of this is to Kill the highest number ES and sudo touch and then sudo rm /tmp/es-restart

That commit BuZz made on RetroPie-Setup was exactly to avoid this problem. But I think I've found the bug on your script...

Here is what is happening:

before that commit, the scripts launched via RetroPie menu were executed as root. Therefore the touch /tmp/es-restart/ was creating a file owned by root.
the emulationstation processes are all started by the pi user.
one of those emulationstation processes is a script responsible to rm /tmp/es-restart at some point, but as the script is being executed by the pi user, it can't remove a file owned by root, i.e. it fails to remove /tmp/es-restart.
emulationstation always restarts if there's a file named /tmp/es-restart, and as this file wasn't removed, emulationstation is always restarting on your tests.

What BuZz made in that commit was exactly make the scripts launched via RetroPie menu be executed by the pi user. But the @TMNTturtlguy 's script makes this fix ineffective because it's doing sudo touch /tmp/es-restart. This means that the /tmp/es-restart file will be owned by root and the problem I described above still happens.

Got it? :-)

By the way, @TMNTturtlguy I've submitted a PR to your little repository: https://github.com/TMNTturtleguy/change_es_systems/pull/1

cyperghost

@meleu .... So mine worked for him because I force remove es-restart via sudo

meleu

@cyperghost yep, but as you can see here in emulationstation.sh, removing the /tmp/es-restart shouldn't be a user's task.

That emulationstation.sh is the piece of code responsible to manage what happens with the user's choice on ES Quit menu (restart ES, quit ES, restart system, shutdown system).

TMNTturtlguy

@meleu thanks so much! Gotta get the kids to daycare, will test out in about 45 minutes.

cyperghost

@meleu said in How to restart ES from a script?:

@cyperghost yep, but as you can see here in emulationstation.sh, removing the /tmp/es-restart shouldn't be a user's task.

That emulationstation.sh is the piece of code responsible to manage what happens with the user's choice on ES Quit menu (restart ES, quit ES, restart system, shutdown system).

EUREKA

TMNTturtlguy

@meleu I merged your changes and loaded into my pi, the script fails t launch. I noticed a few things:

the menu dialog functions were not present
the script that was on github was not updated to reflect the permission changes per the retropie setup script changes. sudo needs to be added in front of the rm and cp commands now. I hadn't updated because that was the last working script using @cyperghost command.

I took your modifications and merged them with the dialog text and the sudo commands and i still get the same issue. When i go to the start menu, select quit, and then any function i see a flash of script and a restart. This newer code does not seem to change anything.

I have added a second branch, branch v2 to the github repository. github v2 If you and @cyperghost could look at the v2 script and possibly download it and try to run it from the retropie menu that would be great.

Thank you both for your time and help.

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy I will only have a chance to look at it tomorrow... But I'll try. Cheers!

TMNTturtlguy

@meleu Not a problem! No rush, I appreciate all the help. Thanks

cyperghost

@TMNTturtlguy I think first @meleu should take a look on your script. If there are still issues with it then I build a "restart binary" based on my script but that will analyze processes and kills always the right one ... so there are no future issue okay?

But I think Master meleu finds an easy solution....

TMNTturtlguy

@cyperghost i agree! I appreciate both of your guys help. In the mean time i will keep tinkering with it and the script works fine without the auto restart function. You just have to manually restart, so for the time being I can still accomplish what I want.

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy out of curiosity: you need a keyboard to choose an option on your script, right? Or is it able to get input from joystick?

TMNTturtlguy

@meleu the way it is written now it works from joystick/controller. The whole point is that i want to be able to make the ES changes without a keyboard. It works great right now with joystick and ps4 controller, less the restart issues. Thanks

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy said in How to restart ES from a script?:

@meleu the way it is written now it works from joystick/controller.

This is curious. I can't see any mention to joy2key in your script. And joy2key is the tool responsible to convert the up/down/left/right on d-pad to up/down/left/right key presses (and A button to <enter>).

Can you confirm that you navigate through your dialog menu using the up/down in your joystick and select an option with the button A?

cyperghost

@meleu
Yes It's working with D-Pad A and B
even this minimal menu works

#!/bin/bash
# Bash Menu Script Example

dialog --clear --backtitle "Backtitle here" --title "Title here" --menu "Choose one of the following options:" 15 40 4 \
1 "Option 1" \
2 "Option 2" \
3 "Option 3"

cyperghost

@meleu @TMNTturtlguy @BuZz Man I'm so ....
pkill -n emulationstatio always kills the newest process that the short version what my script exactly does. With all advantages and disadvantages - but the shortest script ;)

I should more RTFM

meleu

@cyperghost said in How to restart ES from a script?:

@meleu
Yes It's working with D-Pad A and B

Really neat! :-) It seems to be a cool RetroPie feature, because if you launch the script directly from command line you can't use joystick for that.

pkill -n emulationstatio always kills the newest process that the short version what my script exactly does. With all advantages and disadvantages - but the shortest script ;)

Maybe we can make a video like this below replacing pumpkin by emulationstation:

cyperghost

@meleu Is this always the same pumpkin? I think a pumpkin always got's seven lives.

meleu

@cyperghost said in How to restart ES from a script?:

@meleu Is this always the same pumpkin? I think a pumpkin always got's seven lives.

I think one is a binary, two or three are scripts, and the others were launched in an infinite loop inside some of those scripts.