Retropie Installation on Ubuntu Server x64 18.04.1

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.

etheling

@johnodon Great to hear that you got it working. Btw - after installing newer mainline kernel, I am always getting this message/error during boot up:

initramfs unpacking failed: Decoding failed

It appears it's caused by this bug, and I can make the message go away by following proposed temp workaround (tl;dr; change LZ4->GZIP in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.confand run update-initramfs -c).

edit #1: mentioning this as it introduces a visual distraction by 'breaking' the clean Plymouth themed boot up into ES as the error message is shown.

Clyde

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

It appears it's caused by this bug

Reported over a year ago, importance "high", but still unassigned. 😒

edit: However, one of Canonical's staff engineers commented in April:

We currently believe that the decoding error reported in dmesg is actually harmless and has no impact on usability on the system.

Switching from lz4 to gzip compression, simply papers over the warning, without any benefits, and slows down boot.

Kernel should be fixed to correctly parse lz4 compressed initrds, or at least lower the warning, to not be user visible as an error.

So, it may be that that error doesn't cause any actual problems.

Sorry for the research spree, back to topic.

mitu

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

...
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
```

The should be fixed in the RetroPie module.

johnodon

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

The should be fixed in the RetroPie module.

EDIT: Are you saying it is fixed or it will be fixed? I don't see any commits or PRs that are recent enough.

Thanks @mitu . I'll give it another go.

John

mitu

@johnodon Uh, I said should, as in we should probably fix this. Thus far, nothing changed.

johnodon

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

@johnodon Uh, I said should, as in we should probably fix this. Thus far, nothing changed.

LOL...I just updated my post above and saw your reply just pop up. :)

I read your initial reply as "this should be fixed" as in already fixed.

johnodon

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

@johnodon Uh, I said should, as in we should probably fix this. Thus far, nothing changed.

Issue submitted on GH.

etheling

So, it may be that that error doesn't cause any actual problems.

Visual problem with RetroPie is that it 'breaks' the clean Plymouth themed boot up into ES as the error message pops up.

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.

Just reporting back that this worked perfectly.

Clyde

@etheling Maybe some of the tips for hiding the boot texts can help? (Ubuntu doesn't have a /boot/cmdline.txt, but most of those options are either kernel parameters for GRUB, or should be applicable in some other config files.)

johnodon

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

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

@johnodon Uh, I said should, as in we should probably fix this. Thus far, nothing changed.

Issue submitted on GH.

Looks like @mitu submitted a PR and it was merged. I'll test this today.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/pull/3229

John

Clyde

@johnodon @mitu Ahh, that's the synergy which I love about open source communies. Thank both of you!