EmulationStation Scraper NOT Working

mitu

@keithk2581 What version of Emulationstation do you have installed ? If you're still using a Raspbian Jessie installation (i.e. your installation is not using a 4.4 base image), the new version is not going to be offered for installation. Add more info about your system, as detailed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

keithk2581

Hey folks. Thanks for your responses. I apologize since I somewhat new to this and probably lack some of the necessary vocabulary.

I think I've updated emulation station when I updated to my current version 4.4.12. Is there a way to check or another way I should be updating it?

Also how do I tell what version of emulation station I I have installed, since I'm not entirely sure.

Thanks for all your help in advance since I'm new to all of this.

mitu

@keithk2581 Please provide the info asked in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first. You can check your Emulationstation version by pressing Start anywhere in Emulationstation.

keithk2581

Pi Model: 3b
Power Supply :Cana Kit 2.5a
RetroPie Version : 4.4.12
Built From : Pre Made SD Image on RetroPie Website
Controller 8bitdo SNF30 Pro
Emulation Station Version:V2.8.3RP
No Errors logged

Internal Scraper still not working at all, but was previously working on the date I updated to 4.4.12

I hope I provided the necessary info, thanks again for all your help and patience, its really appreciated

mitu

@keithk2581 What Scraper are you using ? There are 2 choices for the internal ES scraper - TheGamesDB or ScreenScraper. ScreenScraper might occasionally not work due to their over-capacity messages.
What ROMs are you trying to scrape - system/game ?

keithk2581

I have it set to the Gamesdb scraper but have changed it to the other with the same results - no games found. I'm was trying to scrape the rest of my Sega genesis (mega drive). I also tried it on other systems, nes, snes and neo geo with the same result. No games found.

stoney66

@keithk2581 For grins I loaded a new rom to check and its working for me, scrape found 3 results and they are correct. I also use only thegamesdb.

keithk2581

Crazy man, I have two of these setup exactly the same way and put together in the same fashion and both have the same issue. Only think I can think of that I did recently was enabled ssh on both. Would that possibly cause this issue? Going to try disabling it when I get home tonight and see what happens. Thanks again to all!

mitu

@keithk2581 No, SSH has no influence over this. Can you try and get the log file from Emulationstation (now that you have SSH enabled) from /home/pi/.emulationstation/es_log.txt and post it to pastebin.com ? Make sure you restart Emulationstation and run the scraper once before getting the log file.

keithk2581

ok here it is:

mitu

The error is something like 'game not found'.

lvl1: 	TheGamesDBJSONRequest - Response had no game data.

What games have you tried to scrape ?

keithk2581

Im missing for approx. 173 mega drive games. I have tried to scrape them individually and even changed the name in the input section. but still returned no games found. I even tried just typing one letter into the input field and searching and still returned no games found.

Here is the link for the error log after I scraped for genesis games:

mitu

@keithk2581 I don't know why it's not working for you, I just tried a few Megdrive games and they work fine when scraping from TheGamesDB. Maybe the names you have for the files are not recognized by the scraping site - what's the name of your ROMs, can you give some examples ?

keithk2581

Addams Family, The.gen
Arch Rivals - The Arcade Game.gen
The Aquatic Games starring James Pond and the Aquabats.gen

……...to name a few out of 173. I have even tried to rename them, the file name and by inputting different variants of the name into the search box, but no luck. Don't understand why its not working on mine. Any suggestions on what I could try next?

Thanks again to you all for you assistance, it is truly appreciated.

mitu

I think that the problem is with the names of the ROMs. If I try to scrape Addams Family, The, no result is found, but if I change the name of the ROM to The Addams Family, the game is found and scraped. It's odd that from over 100 titles, none of them is matched, but they seems to be named in a peculiar way.

As an alternative, you can try skyscraper or scraper - they're external scrapers that use mainly the file contents to scrape and the name of the ROM is not that important.

keithk2581

Yes it's very weird, I too, have tried changing the name, but nothing is found still, what's even more weird is that it was working right after the update to 4.4.12 but then suddenly stopped on both of my builds. I guess I'll have to try the other scrapers for now, manually enter each game it missing or format one of my builds and do a reinstall and see if that works. Thanks to all for your assistance, if you can think of anything else, my ears(eyes) are open

keithk2581

Other question I just thought of, is there any setting or file or something written in a file like the gamelist.xml file that would prevent the scraper from finding any games?

mitu

@keithk2581 There is a setting in for saving the metadata in Emulationstation (Save Metadata on Exit) which can be turned off - this way the gamelist.xml is not written, but that's not what happens in your case.
Is your disk full ?

keithk2581

Disk does not appear to be full:

https://imgur.com/gallery/63MCfwY alt text

keithk2581

So as an experiment, I decided to try a fresh install on a 3rd SD and after all was installed and updated, the scraper did work! Something must be corrupted on my other 2 builds, just don't know what or how or why! Any idea if I can fix this without formatting and starting from scratch or is that my only option?