Prevent some user changes to your setup

[pjft]

Hi all,

In the past few weeks I've been trying to create ways to lock down some of my RetroPie instances further so that guests can use them with less risk of damaging things.

So far I had been relying mostly on Kiosk mode but there were still a few areas I wasn't comfortable with, so I created a few scripts that I thought I'd share in case they can be useful to someone.

I create these all as .sh scripts in the retropiemenufolder.

1. Disable run-command and RetroArch menus

I created two separate copies of /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand.cfg- one with runcommand enabled and another one disabled. It makes it easier to revert.

cp "/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand.cfg.off" "/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand.cfg"
sed -i 's/input_menu_toggle_btn = "nul"/input_menu_toggle_btn = "60"/g' /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

2. Re-enable run-command and RetroArch menus

cp "/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand.cfg.on" "/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand.cfg"
sed -i 's/input_menu_toggle_btn = "60"/input_menu_toggle_btn = "nul"/g' /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

3. Prevent arcade high-scores from being saved

For those like me who keep an honest high-score table and don't want it to be ruined by some friends coming over for an unlimited-credit-feed-fest session. I simply mount a tmpfs over the 4 highscore folders I have in my systems. It reverts to the original one on reboot.

sudo mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/fba
sudo mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003/hi
sudo mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003-plus/hi
sudo mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame/hi

4. Re-enable arcade high-score saving

sudo umount /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/fba
sudo umount /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003/hi
sudo umount /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003-plus/hi
sudo umount /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame/hi

There. These are for the most part extremely hacky, but in case anyone is looking for something like these, feel free to use or adapt them.