Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1

johnodon

You learn something new everyday.

I run RetroPie on top of Ubuntu on an Asus CN65 Chromebox (Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5500U CPU @ 2.40GHz). I also have an Asus CN60 Chromebox (Celeron) that runs stock ChromeOS. I use this second box to stream web content (mainly sports from some nefarious sources).

And then it dawned on me...

Why not just install genuine Google Chrome (no need for Chromium) on the RetroPie box and create a launcher for it in Ports. It works BEAUTIFULLY!!! I can stream 4K content from Youtube without a single hiccup and I can now retire a piece of equipment.

If anyone wants to do this, all I did was download the current stable release and install it using apt:

wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

If not already done, add 'Ports' to your /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg:

  <system>
    <name>ports</name>
    <fullname>Ports</fullname>
    <path>~/RetroPie/roms/ports</path>
    <extension>.sh .SH</extension>
    <command>bash %ROM%</command>
    <platform>ports</platform>
    <theme>ports</theme>
  </system>

Create a ~/Retropie/roms/ports/Google Chrome.sh script with the following in it:

google-chrome &>/dev/null

Create a ~/Retropie/roms/ports/gamelist.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gameList>
	<game>
		<path>./Chrome.sh</path>
		<name>Chrome</name>
		<playcount>2</playcount>
		<lastplayed>20200906T151625</lastplayed>
	</game>
	<game>
		<path>./Google Chrome.sh</path>
		<name>Google Chrome</name>
		<desc>Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, and was later ported to Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android where it is the default browser built into the OS. </desc>
		<image>./images/Google Chrome-image.png</image>
		<video>./images/Google Chrome-video.mp4</video>
		<marquee>./images/Google Chrome-marquee.png</marquee>
		<rating>0.85</rating>
		<releasedate>20080902T000000</releasedate>
		<developer>Google</developer>
		<publisher>Google</publisher>
		<genre>Web Browser</genre>
		<playcount>1</playcount>
		<lastplayed>20200906T153421</lastplayed>
	</game>
</gameList>

And of course add some images and video if you like.

John

Clyde

Nice find. 👍 I'm curious, though. Why use Chrome from an external source when there is Chromium only one sudo apt install chromium-browser from the official Ubuntu repositories away? Is there a technical reason or just by habit?

johnodon

@Clyde said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

Nice find. 👍 I'm curious, though. Why use Chrome from an external source when there is Chromium only one sudo apt install chromium-browser from the official Ubuntu repositories away? Is there a technical reason or just by habit?

I remember when I was messing with ChromiumOS, widevine wasn't officially supported. I assumed the same was tru for Chromium browser.

External source? Meaning not using 'apt'? The Chrome download is directly from Google.

Clyde

External meaning not from the distribution's own software repositories. On Linux, using the official repo is the preferred way to install software, as it has has several benefits to "the Windows way", i.e. downloading every application from a different website.

Every package from the repo is checked against tampering by its cryptographic signature, and it also will be automatically updated with the rest of the system. Simply put, Linux' repository system is a decades-old super app store for the whole system and its applications.

Since security updates are especially important for web browsers, your prime benefit of using Chromium from the repo would be the auto-updates – if it has the functionality that you need for your project, of course.

Just my two cents triggered by your description, as I see many new Linux users (don't know if you are one) who keep using the installation method they're used to from their former OS. 🧐

edit: two single-word changes for better wording.

johnodon

After all of this, I ended up installing Firefox instead due to screen tearing issues in Chrome. The process is the same except Firefox can be installed via apt and naturally a new launch script needs to be created to start firefox.

FYI...Firefox also displayed the same tearing issues, however there is a fix that worked for me:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1141291/screen-tearing-ubuntu-18-04

John

Clyde

@johnodon Thanks for the update and for sharing the link. 👍

johnodon

Can someone else run MisterB's script on a test device with server/mini 18.04? I'm not sure what changed but a lot of packages are failing to install (openbox, dialog, xmlstart, etc.). I had to add the universe repo (as per my original instructions above) for things to start working again.

Honestly, I'm not sure how the script ever worked without that repo included but I can't see anything in the history where it was removed. Did a recent update to the 18.04 ISO do something?

Clyde

@johnodon said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

I'm not sure what changed but a lot of packages are failing to install (openbox, dialog, xmlstart, etc.). I had to add the universe repo (as per my original instructions above) for things to start working again.

All of those packages are in the universe repo since at least Ubuntu 16.04 (see openbox, dialog, and xmlstarlet on https://packages.ubuntu.com/). So, that repo was needed for them as early as April 2016.

I don't know if universe is enabled on Ubuntu (Server) 18.04 by standard. Did you encounter this problem on a new installation or an old one?

johnodon

@Clyde said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

I don't know if universe is enabled on Ubuntu (Server) 18.04 by standard. Did you encounter this problem on a new installation or an old one?

I'm just fiddling around today as I am almost finished my 4-play cab and know I will have a need to completely reinstall (all new hardware). I swear that I have used his script in the past to install on 18.04 and don't recall having these issues and don't remember enabling Universe prior to running it. The again, I could just be having a senior moment. :)

Universe is enabled by default on 20.04 so no issue there but I am facing some other challenges with that version that I am trying to work through.

John

MisterB

@johnodon Just remember to use the LTS-20.04 branch of my script if you use that version of the OS. If you have issues, please report back. I recent did a test run that appeared to work OK for me.

johnodon

@MisterB said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

@johnodon Just remember to use the LTS-20.04 branch of my script if you use that version of the OS. If you have issues, please report back. I recent did a test run that appeared to work OK for me.

I installed 20.04 on a Lenovo T430 laptop (my sandbox device) and I get a screen like this after the first reboot when the script is finished:

https://imgur.com/a/qdrDJRA

MisterB

Yikes! No idea what is going on there...

etheling

@MisterB Not sure if this is what's causing @johnodon s troubles but I had the install fail few times because unattended upgrades kicked in, got lock for apt and thus made the install script fail in odd ways as apt gets from script started failing.

I added this to the very beginning of the script to disable unattended upgrades:

echo "Disable unattended upgrades for now. Re-enabled at the end of main install script"
systemctl stop unattended-upgrades
systemctl status unattended-upgrades
systemctl disable unattended-upgrades
# dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades 
# dpkg --configure -a 
# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades

And then just before reboot:

function enable_unattended_upgrades () {
        echo " "
        echo "+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
        echo "| Re-enable unattended upgrades"
        echo "+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
        echo " "
        sleep 5
        systemctl start unattended-upgrades
        systemctl status unattended-upgrades
        systemctl enable unattended-upgrades
        ## dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades
        cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
        dpkg --configure -a ; # make sure everything is in synch; unnessary..yes?
}

Edit #1: indicative of above problem are lines such as below in 'retropie_setup_ubuntu.log' or on terminal:

Waiiting for cache lock: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is held by process 220203 (apt-get)... 1

Edit #2: I also ran to another possibly IPv6 name resolution related issue with apt where it randomly failed trying to resolve archive.ubuntu.com resulting as following error (see retropie_setup_ubuntu.log):

....
Get:2 http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntu-x-swat/updates/ubuntu focal/main i386 Packages [5,912 B]
Err:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
  Could not resolve 'archive.ubuntu.com'
Err:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease
....

I'm not sure if I'm addressing the root cause here or not, but forcing apt to stick to IPv4 appears to make this problem go away:

echo "Prevent apt to use IPv6"
## https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9940/convince-apt-get-not-to-use-ipv6-method
echo 'Acquire::ForceIPv4 "true";' | sudo tee /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99force-ipv4

johnodon

@MisterB said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

Yikes! No idea what is going on there...

OK...updating the Mainline kernel (I chose 5.8.9) per @etheling 's advice solved the issue: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/233967

Basically, X wasn't starting but I still can't explain the craziness on the screen.

johnodon

@etheling said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

@MisterB Not sure if this is what's causing @johnodon s troubles but I had the install fail few times because unattended upgrades kicked in, got lock for apt and thus made the install script fail in odd ways as apt gets from script started failing.

I added this to the very beginning of the script to disable unattended upgrades:

echo "Disable unattended upgrades for now. Re-enabled at the end of main install script"
systemctl stop unattended-upgrades
systemctl status unattended-upgrades
systemctl disable unattended-upgrades
# dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades 
# dpkg --configure -a 
# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades

And then just before reboot:

function enable_unattended_upgrades () {
        echo " "
        echo "+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
        echo "| Re-enable unattended upgrades"
        echo "+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
        echo " "
        sleep 5
        systemctl start unattended-upgrades
        systemctl status unattended-upgrades
        systemctl enable unattended-upgrades
        ## dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades
        cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
        dpkg --configure -a ; # make sure everything is in synch; unnessary..yes?
}

this has fixed my package failure issues! Thanks @etheling . :)

johnodon

@MisterB FYA...

Can someone who has used MisterB's 20.04 script on either mini or server try to install mame (not lr-mame) from the experimental packages. I get the below error and had to reinstall python to get past it.

FYI...I do not have this issue when I use the 'master' branch to install on top of 18.04.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Building 'mame' : MAME emulator
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Removing additional swap
Adding 5075 MB of additional swap
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 5 GiB (5321519104 bytes)
no label, UUID=a9d782a2-e629-4f3d-927e-4d78db137903
swapon: /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/tmp/swap: swapon failed: Invalid argument
GCC 9 detected
makefile:1032: *** Python is not available in path.  Stop.
strip: 'mame64': No such file
Removing additional swap
/home/pi
Could not successfully build mame - MAME emulator (/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/tmp/build/mame/mame64 not found).

Clyde

@johnodon said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

makefile:1032: *** Python is not available in path. Stop.

Maybe that's because Ubuntu switched to Python 3 ex factory with 20.04. You could try to change the system's standard alternative for python, see here for instructions.

johnodon

@Clyde said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

@johnodon said in Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1:

makefile:1032: *** Python is not available in path. Stop.

Maybe that's because Ubuntu switched to Python 3 ex factory with 20.04. You could try to change the system's standard alternative for python, see here for instructions.

Thanks @Clyde.

I guess the question is if this is something that needs to be accounted for in @MisterB's script or in the RP scriptmodule.

Clyde

@johnodon Absolutely. Alas, I don't know anything about scripting or Python. It's just that a friend told me about his problems (with GIMP plugins that still require P2) because of the change in Ubuntu yesterday.

johnodon

I opened an issue on @MisterB's github and he is already engaged. I'm going to perform some more testing.