ES crashing on launch - "terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_range'"

New2pi

Luckily I had SSH enabled so I can boot to terminal. I did that then disabled auto launch of ES and also try to troubleshoot.

That said I can't figure out the root cause yet. I'm new to PI and Linux for the matter.

Here is the full error message immediately following the starting of ES from the terminal. The ES logo screen does come up and stays for about 5 seconds.

pi@retropie:~/RetroPie-Setup $ emulationstation
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_range'
what(): basic_string::substr: __pos (which is 30) > this->size() (which is 11)
Aborted

What I've tried:
-I do utilize a USB drive but have disabled that for now thinking it may be the issue but the error remains the same.

I have tried fully uninstalling all core packages and reinstalling from binary.
I also removed all the extra drivers like control block.
I ran the take roms ownership script
I probably did a a dozen other things that were variations from the above and generally went hunting around for additional options.

Where do I find more logs on the crash or how to look at any ES config files to see if there's some UI option that's bad? Anyone have any thoughts or ideas in general?

New2pi

Sorry — Just found this post. I will try this once I research where that config option is from the terminal and report back.

I was messing with UI options for collections so this seems like a plausible cause and being a setting I tripped over and tinkered with without remembering that I did it.

UI GAMELIST OPTION

mitu

Looks like a bad gamelist file and not a configuration file problem. Please fill in the information requested in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

New2pi

Thank you @mitu

It was in fact the ParseGamelistOnly option that caused the problem, similar to the post I linked to above.

I was able to SSH into the terminal and then went to the hidden .emulationstation folder. There I edited the es_settings.cfg and changed the parsegamelistonly option back to false, then did a reboot.

What is the best way to rebuild gamelist files? Is there any command?

Pi Model or other hardware: B+
Power Supply used: 2.5A part of the following case Miuzei Raspberry Pi 3B+ Case with Fan and Heat Sinks, 5V 2.5A Power Supply, Compatible with Raspberry 3 Model B+, Pi 3 Model B
RetroPie Version Used: 4.4.2
Built From: retropie-4.4-rpi2_rpi3.img.gz
Error messages received:
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_range'
what(): basic_string::substr: __pos (which is 30) > this->size() (which is 11)
Aborted
How to replicate the problem:
turn on parsegameslistonly then did a scrape from terminal

KN4THX

@new2pi I don't know any fancy way but you can re-scrape all systems and it builds the gamelist pretty quickly since all of the files are already downloaded.

mitu

@new2pi said in ES crashing on launch - "terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::out_of_range'":

What is the best way to rebuild gamelist files? Is there any command?

That's easy, remove/rename the gamelist.xml files. ES will rebuild it, but any scraped information will be lost. Or you can find out which gamelist is at fault (look in ~/.emulationstation/es_log.txt and try to guess which gamelist is read when the crash occurs) and then find out what's causing this. My guess is that there's a corrupted .xml file somewhere.

The problem is one of your gamelists, not the option you turned off. I can't replicate the problem with a 4.4 installation.

wiggy808

@New2pi couple of thoughts. The scraping is done by the internal scraper on ES which references thegamesdb for all of its information gathering when its looking at your roms. If you're looking for an alternative / external scraper, you can use somethign like "Skraper" which is one I'm becoming quickly fond of but thats a 3rd party tool and you'll have to learn that one on your own.

As far as gamelist.xml issues, I just had an issue with scraping and gamelist files just this week and it all boils down to the gamelist.xml and how it was created and if it is done correctly. Your version of RetroPie has two locations for gamelist.xml files:

/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/<console>
and
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/<console>

The one in .emulationstation is read first I believe, so if you have two of them, check that one first and make sure the paths are correct for your roms, images, videos, etc.

New2pi

@mitu Thank you, that was correct, es_log.txt showed me where the issues were and so I could target the rescrape better.