Launching RetroPie from Raspbian PIXELS… so near yet so far!

Crispy

Hello! First time poster, long time RetroPie fan.

I have finally gotten around to setting up RetroPie on my own Raspberry Pi, running on top of vanilla Raspbian. The installation process was seamless and I haven't hit any major hurdles with RetroPie itself. However, I am struggling to switch between PIXELS and RetroPie on the same SD card (and yes, I know you're not really meant to do this).

I found Andrew Oakley's guide which in theory works around this limitation. Per the article, I am trying to set up a .desktop configuration file which runs a terminal command to: quit the desktop environment; login again on tty1; and then run RetroPie. Here's the relevant line of code:

sudo su -c "systemctl stop lightdm ; ttyecho -n /dev/tty1 \"username\" ; ttyecho -n /dev/tty1 \"password\" ; ttyecho -n /dev/tty1 \"emulationstation ; sudo systemctl start lightdm ; exit\""

I expect this to unload PIXELS, and then login on tty1 by entering the username on one line, and then the password on the next, and run the command 'emulationstation'. Instead, the entire command is entered in the username field (the -n flag prompts a new line but its just treated as a carriage return, and not like hitting 'Enter' on the keyboard). The output is:

raspberrypi login: username
password
emulationstation ; sudo systemctl start lightdm ; exit
password: ___ # expecting a password...

NOT

raspberrypi login: username
password: password
next command: emulationstation
next command: sudo systemctl start lightdm
next command: exit

So the terminal just hangs, expecting a password. I've tried adding line breaks with \r (they just print as "\r"), changing -n to -ne, and nothing has worked.

I'm new to Linux, so all help gratefully received! Thanks for your support. :)

tpo1990

Why would you want to do this kind of approach, when officially the RetroPie image is based on Raspbian lite and you can easily install PIXEL desktop/Raspbian desktop from the RetroPie setup?

Crispy

Thanks for the info! The answer is simply inexperience. This is a project device, which I am using to learn Linux and programming as much as to play games.

Now I know better, I might buy a second SD card to try the 'official' approach, but for now I am trying to get this one to behave as in theory it should. So all advice happily heeded!

tpo1990

@Crispy Well you could probably build some script or config file that could make the X11 Window close and exit out to CLI/Command line and then start Emulationstation again, but why do this when it works just fine with the official RetroPie image.

Officially you either flash the RetroPie image onto your SD card or you use NOOBS/PINN bootloader and install RetroPie from there. Once the RetroPie image has been installed, you can go into RetroPie-Setup from Emulationstation and then into Raspbian packages to install PIXEL/Desktop. When the installation of the desktop package is complete, you will have a launch file in Ports section of Emulationstation that you can use to start the PIXEL desktop from. When you want to exit or close the desktop, you simply just click on the Raspbian start menu(logo) and then click on exit to command line.

The "exit to command line" will make you return back to Emulationstation.

If you want to learn Linux and programming, i suggest you look at how to use the Linux terminal or command line first and then look on how to create bash scripts. That will get you started. Once you have done this, you could look into compiling software from source on Linux later on.

Crispy

Thanks for the advice! I bought a second micro SD card and have installed PIXEL via Raspbian rather than the other way around. For the most part, this is much cleaner, so thank you.

The problem is, it's caused an unexpected issue. A GBA ROM I was happily playing on my old RetroPie install no longer works on the new install. It loads to the start screen and then refuses to accept any user input, just playing the intro music on a loop.

Is there a way to reset a ROM, or an emulator?

tpo1990

@Crispy Good to hear that it works for you with the official way.

Maybe you have a bad rom dump of the specific GBA rom. Did you try other GBA roms or other GBA emulator?

You should be able to select a different gba emulator when launching the GBA rom, just press your mapped "A/south" button on your controller or keyboard and it should bring up the runcommand menu.

If no other GBA emulator is present in the runcommand menu, then you should be able to install more emulators through the RetroPie setup menu.

Crispy

Belated thanks for your help, it turned out my new flash of RetroPie was just out of date. I updated it the usual way and it worked perfectly after that! Thank you, my RetroPie is really getting somewhere now. :D

tpo1990

@Crispy Success. If anything fails then reflash RetroPie and update. It usually works every time. Your welcome. :-)