uae configuration added to roms/amiga is getting deleted

petarku

hi guys , i am using raspberry pi 3 and retropie with Ultimate Amiga WHDLoad for RetroPie. I did setup couple of months ago and everything is working fine on 10 games i have there. Recently I have problem with updated version of swos , so i edited uae config file manually on my mac and transfered it to pi via ftp software. if i restart just emulation station i can use edited uae config fine and it is workng as expected , if i restart my pi or shutdown it , configuration is beeing reverted to previous state or any new configuration added is being deleted after restart. I even tried with new sd card as i thought maybe there is some problem with sd card but it is not , on the new card that same is happening.
Can someone help what should i do to prevent this from happening ?
Thanks in advance

Clyde

@petarku As a dirty hack for testing, you could set the file to read-only:

chmod -w path/to/filename

This command will remove write permissions from the file for all users. That includes deletion. If the file still doesn't stay, there may be a problem with both of your sd cards after all. This will restore write permissions:

chmod +w path/to/filename    # for all users
chmod u+w path/to/filename   # only for the file's owner

Can you store/modify other files on the card that survive a reboot?

petarku

@Clyde good advice , i will set it to read only once i transfer it and lets see.
I really doubt that would be the problem with both sd cards but you never know.
i didnt try other files , might try the files outside amiga folder , i have few roms on other systems might just try to duplicate them and try
Thanks for fast reply , will come back with findings ..

Clyde

@petarku You can copy a file with cp or create an empty file with touch:

cp file file.copy # copies 'file' to 'file.copy'
touch touched     # creates the empty file 'touched'

If touch is used on an existing file, it only updates its timestamp to the current time.

petarku

@Clyde set permissions to read only and that file is now not changed and it is working how it supposed to work as file is not getting changed and that might be dirty fix but it is working so thank you for that. if i dont protect file it is getting overridden with some generic uae configuration so then swos is not working as it should.
It seems that maybe uae config creator that exist in current setup or something else is overriding file in background. It seems that i dont get anymore config files deleted on restart , but only changed so dont know what was happening before but i dont see it anymore , just uae files getting changed
is there a way to see which process is editing file ?

Clyde

@petarku Glad I could be of at least some help. Alas, I don't have any deeper knowledge about uae.

To monitor a file for changes is possible but not that trivial. Check this out (first answer about auditctl): Servervault: Find out which process is changing a file

I don't know if Retropie has audit support, though. edit: According to this bug report, it's disabled in Raspbian on purpose, and since Retropie is based on Raspbian …

Clyde

Another idea: You could scan for logfiles that contain "uae" or the config's filename to see if there are any messages concerning it, like that a process can't change/delete it since you write protected it.

grep uae /var/log/*  # scans all files in /var/log NON-RECURSIVELY for "uae"
grep -r uae /var/log # scans all files in /var/log RECURSIVELY for "uae"

/var/log is Linux' standard log path. Retropie or uae might use other logs like /tmp/runcommand.log. So, you might have to scan other paths:

grep uae /tmp/runcommand.log  # scans only this file for "uae"
grep uae $HOME/*   # scans the logged-in user's home directory non-recursively
grep -r uae $HOME  # scans the logged-in user's home directory recursively
grep -r uae ~  # does the same as the former command
grep -r uae /  # scans the whole directory tree recursively (might take some time ;) )

If the output is too long, you can "pipe" it to the text viewer "less" by adding | less after the grep command:

grep -r uae /var/log | less  # sends ("pipes") grep's output to less

In less, you can scroll through the output with the usual keys. "/" lets you search the text (hit "n" for next find), "q" exits it.

Alternatively, you can redirect grep's output into a file by using > or >>:

grep -r uae /var/log > log.txt   # overwrites log.txt every time
grep -r uae /var/log >> log.txt  # appends to log.txt

Like I said, next to "uae" the config's filename might be a good guess to search.

petarku

thanks @Clyde for your time i will take a look into it

HoraceAndSpider

Do the SWOS update guys provide an LHA archive with a Whdload slave?