Splashscreen problem, Help please.

[ccaveman84]

Hello everyone!
I'm completely new to the site and Raspberrypi but I am really enjoying playing with it so far and I've found a wealth of help in the topics on this forum so I thank you all very much for that.

I've got Retropie installed on my B3+ with many emulators, roms, cool themes and so on.
I've also acquired a few custom splashscreen images and videos which I have sent to my Pi's splashscreens folder on my SD via FTP.

They all work great and its been a lot of fun changing the startup and covering the boot text at startup until emulationstation finishes loading.

I have all of my games stored and running off of a 120gb external USB HDD and these also work great, however if I boot up my pi with the USB HDD connected my pi no longer sees the custom splashscreen files on my SD card.

without the USB HDD connected when I boot my pi it loads with the custom splashscreen I set and if I go to the splashscreen section in the retropie config under option 2 for custom splashscreens all of the files I sent to my sd via FTP are listed as they should be.

Now with the USB HDD connected when the pi loads it doesn't load a splashscreen only showing the emulation station splash screen.
When fully booted if I go to splashscreens in the retropie configuration section choosing option 2 to view my custom splashscreens my splashscreen files are no longer listed..

when my HDD is connected if I load my pi in my FTP program the splashscreens folder is empty but if I put files in there they get sent to a splashscreens folder on my HDD instead of the HDD, this is not ideal as I want them on the SD card not HDD..

if I disconnect the HDD then the original files I sent to the SD show up again..

I cant/don't want to run the splashscreens from the HDD as the USB doesn't kick in fast enough at boot causing the pi not to be able to load the splash before it starts the boot process but with the HDD connected the pi refuses to see the files on the SD.

I hope I haven't confused anyone too much with this post because I am soooo confused right now, I just cant figure it out lol.

The short of it is all I want to do is work out how to stop my pi trying to read the splashscreens from the HDD when it is connected and force it to read the splashscreens folder on the SD card instead as intended.

Any help that can be provided would be very much appreciated
Go easy on me as I am new to Raspberrypi however I do have fairly moderate experience with this sort of thing lol.

Raspberrypi B3+
running RetroPie
32gb SD
120GB external HDD

[mitu]

How did you set up the HDD with RetroPie ? If you used the method explained in the docs, then your whole /home/pi/RetroPie folder (which includes the splashscreen folder) is on the external drive.

One method to solve your problem is to start the splashscreen after the disc is monted and the folder is available. You can modify the splashscreen service file to run after all local filesystems have been brought online - just modify the /etc/systemd/system/asplashscreen.service file and change the line

Wants=local-fs-pre.target

to

Wants=local-fs.target

then restart the system. This means that the splashscreen will start a bit later - waiting for the disc to be online. This file is a system file, so you'll need sudo to edit the file (sudo nano /path/to/file) and might be changed during a Retropie upgrade, so YMMV.

[ccaveman84]

@mitu awesome than you so much that worked perfectly and was exactly what I needed.

Now my splash screens are loading off the hdd with barely any difference in the boot. 😊

[mitu]

@ccaveman84 Thanks for confirming the fix.
@buzz maybe we can modify the splashscreen service to start after the local-fs.target ? I can submit a PR.