Migrating a 'mixed' arcade folder from one retropie install to another

Chillimonster

Morning.

I have my arcade set a i want it now - as a mix of mame2003 and lr-fba-next roms with the allocations in place.

If i copy the folder to another retropie install with the full arcade folder (includes images and gamelist xml), and the emulators.cfg file (from /opt/retropie/configs/all all should be ok and work, but it doesn't

It does not see the per-game allocations and defaults to the mame 2003 for all games ignoring the lr-fba-next allocations.

Is there another file i need that i have overlooked?

caver01

@Chillimonster By "allocations" you are talking about the runcommand choices, right?

Chillimonster

@caver01 correct - i have approx 1500 roms, and some use fba-next.

If i format a new card and install retropie, what do i have to copy over to keep the associations in tact?

ben_thatmustbeme

I thought this was all handled in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg as you said. Make sure that file is owned by the user, not root. After that I would say try setting a different emu for one of them and see what file it writes. Maybe it doesn't like the format. I don't know enough about what it is hashing in that file. If anyone knows where that code is and can point me at it, i'd like to know a bit more about how that works.

rbaker

@Chillimonster Why not just clone the card?

Chillimonster

@rbaker

Current build is 3.7,

Dont like doing the upgrade script and prefer to perform clean formats (OCD and all that) so when 4.0 drops i want to be able to move all across with little fuss.

Chillimonster

Transfering the files to a 3.8.1 build does not work and i have to re-assign the neo-geo roms individually.

Does 3.8.1 store the runcommand allocations somewhere differently? Or in a different format?

dankcushions

as far as i know /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg is the file.

what happens when you create a new association? do you see a new entry appear on this file along with all your old ones?

Chillimonster

@dankcushions

I will check when i get home as i've started a fresh 3.8.1 build before i came to work and copied the roms over but not the .cfg file ready for me to have a play later.

I was hoping i could just copy the .cfg file over for an easy life ;-)

ben_thatmustbeme

@Chillimonster just did a little digging
/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg uses an md5 checksum of the system it is trying to run it with and the path to the rom. So make sure the path to the rom is exactly the same and whatever emulator the arcade folder is defaulted to is the same.

Chillimonster

@ben_thatmustbeme said in Migrating a 'mixed' arcade folder from one retropie install to another:

@Chillimonster just did a little digging
/opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg uses an md5 checksum of the system it is trying to run it with and the path to the rom. So make sure the path to the rom is exactly the same and whatever emulator the arcade folder is defaulted to is the same.

Thanks for the insight - very useful information.

So..... could the updated emulator binaries have an effect on the checksums in the hash files, causing the roms not to run on the new system?

ben_thatmustbeme

@Chillimonster no
it literally does this, and i ran this manually to confirm
/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg
under n64 has
<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ n64 %ROM%</command>

it will take the third and forth options and jam them together and do the md5sum of that. I checked it and

echo 'n64/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/n64/Goldeneye.v64 ' |md5sum
gave me the same hash as my file.

So if
/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg and /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulators.cfg and the files are in the exact same path, and named the same, you should be good to go.

Chillimonster

@ben_thatmustbeme

Thanks for taking the time to find this out for me - i would have been lost!

Will confirm the positions of the files are the same across 3.7 / 3.8 / 3.8.1 later when i get out of the workshop.

BuZz

I guess it could be improved to just hash the system name and filename without path. I did that code some time ago, and I didn't really think about a case where roms may be moved to another path etc. Changing it would break backward compatibility though, unless it checked for old and new hash etc. Maybe it would be easier to just use a human readable key. system_romname (removing spaces and so on). I might revisit this at some point.

BuZz

PS. I have moved this thread to help/support