Issues Running ROMs from FTP

zalterego36

Hello all, I have a little experience with Raspberry Pi and Linux, and since you're now supporting Rpi4 I thought I'd give RetroPie a shot. But I'm not an expert by any means. Everything loaded up fine, but now I'm trying to run ROMs from my home media server and I'm having no luck. I've searched the forum and the only thing I found was from 4 years ago and it didn't seem to help...

Pi Model or other hardware: Rpi4 2gb
Power Supply used: Vilros Power Supply for Pi 4
RetroPie Version Used: 4.6 Rpi4
Built From: retropie-buster-4.6-rpi4.img, downloaded from your site
USB Devices connected: Kano Keyboard
Controller used: Cheap 6axis SNES
Error messages received: Depends on how I've attempted to mount. Mostly 'Mount Error (112): Host is Down', but I know it's not...details below.
Guide used: [https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-Network-Share/](link url)

I've ultimately just started to run the preferred command just to see if it works. Here's what I'm trying:

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=UN,password=PW,nounix,noserverino //192.168.0.1/volume1/roms /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

But I've tried a bunch of stuff...including adding it to fstab and writing an entire FTP connection line into the command. (e.g. ftp://USER:PASSWORD@192.168.0.1/volume1/roms)

When I try

traceroute 192.168.0.1

I'm able to find it and retrieve information. Same with ping.

I know that the file server works. It's not fancy, it's just a hard-drive attached to my router, but I can FTP into it from my computer and upload things just fine. I also have it attached to Kodi on my Nvidia shield and I'm able to play media from it without issue.

I've even tried the remote IP address, but then I get 'Mount Error (115): Operation Now in Progress' after a long hang-up and nothing happens.

Any suggestions on how to fix the issue? And if I neglected to include something, please let me know.

mitu

ftp is not a 'mountable' type of file share - it can't be mapped by default unless you install something like 'fuse'. You need to export folders via SMB or NFS. How are you accessing you media server from your PC ?

Error messages received: Depends on how I've attempted to mount. Mostly 'Mount Error (112): Host is Down', but I know it's not...details below.

That may happen if your file server doesn't support CIFS/SMB. Can you add -v to the mount command to get more info ? You can also look in the output of dmesg to spot any mount issues.

zalterego36

~~It's possible that it doesn't support SMB, I'll see if I can find that answer~~. It looks like my router (tplink archer C9) supports both SMB and CIFS (at least I found a bunch of topics talking about it). Was there something before the tutorial I included in my initial post that I should have known how to do?

I access the media sever using Filezilla and the IP address/login details. I can upload and download to the hard drive and it can be accessed from anywhere. Kodi accesses it with a ftp://USER:PASSWORD@192.168.0.1/volume1/ under the system directory. I have three or four different folders in volume1 and each is accessed for different file types.

I can also access the media server through the network list on my computer. I ran a command suggested by TP link on my Windows 10 machine and entered the credentials, now it appears like a regular drive. I can also access the RetroPie Raspberry Pi4 the same way.

Anyway, here's the output with a -v appended to the end of the 'Mount' Command.

mount.cifs kernel mount options: ip=192.168.0.1,unc=\\192.168.0.1\volume1,nounix,noserverino,user=USER,prefixpath=roms,pass=********
mount error(112): Host is down
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

I've never used the dmesg command before, so I'm not sure what to look for, but something that might be relevant was displayed in red and mentioned a mount:

CIFS VFS: cifs_mount failed w/return code = -112

If I need to set up something else to make it work, could you please direct me to what I need to learn about? Alternatively, if you have a suggestion on how to set up a single repository for Rom files in my home so that multiple RetroPies could have access to the same games and backed-up saves, I would appreciate that. That's my end goal. My wife and I both enjoy retro gaming...

Though it's not the worst thing in the world if I just upload using a flash drive.

mitu

@zalterego36 said in Issues Running ROMs from FTP:

I can also access the media server through the network list on my computer. I ran a command suggested by TP link on my Windows 10 machine and entered the credentials, now it appears like a regular drive. I can also access the RetroPie Raspberry Pi4 the same way.

This means that CIFS is working.

mount.cifs kernel mount options: ip=192.168.0.1,unc=\192.168.0.1\volume1,nounix,noserverino,user=USER,prefixpath=roms,pass=********
mount error(112): Host is down

This means your PI cannot connect to the share. If the IP address is correct and you can reach your router from the Pi, then check if you don't have an ACL/Firewall on the SMB/CIFS share you added on the router.

If might also be a CIFS/SMB version mismatch, try changing thevers mount parameter, from 3 to 1, to see if it works:

vers=arg

SMB protocol version. Allowed values are:

• 1.0 - The classic CIFS/SMBv1 protocol.

• 2.0 - The SMBv2.002 protocol. This was initially introduced in Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2008. Note that the initial release version of Windows Vista spoke a slightly different dialect (2.000) that is not supported.

• 2.1 - The SMBv2.1 protocol that was introduced in Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008R2.

• 3.0 - The SMBv3.0 protocol that was introduced in Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

• 3.1.1 or 3.11 - The SMBv3.1.1 protocol that was introduced in Microsoft Windows Server 2016.

Note too that while this option governs the protocol version used, not all features of each version are available.

zalterego36

@mitu

Okay, I feel like I'm getting somewhere. I ran the suggested code with the version adjustment in there (had to Google it to figure out where it went):

sudo mount -t cifs -o vers=1.0,username=USER,password=PASSWORD,nounix,noserverino //192.168.0.1/volume1/roms /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

and it didn't seem to do anything, then I ran it again and it returned:

mount error(16): Device or resource busy
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

Which seems to mean that it's mounted...right?

Only problem is that when I move to the next step , adding the mount command to autostart.sh, it doesn't pick up anything. It's set to wait for my network on boot.

When I try to navigate to it it just says that no such directory exists.

Any other suggestions or something that might give me more information? (Also, I appreciate your help with this. I'd like to get it up and working, though I may need to adjust my expectations).

mitu

@zalterego36 said in Issues Running ROMs from FTP:

and it didn't seem to do anything, then I ran it again and it returned:
mount error(16): Device or resource busy
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)

Which seems to mean that it's mounted...right?

Probably, but you can check with mount or df -h to see if the remote folder is mounted. If it is, then make sure you add the uid and gid parameters so that the pi user can write/read from the share.

.. username=UN,password=PW,nounix,noserverino,uid=pi,gid=pi

zalterego36

@mitu said in Issues Running ROMs from FTP:

df -h

I ran that command and I got a few things, but the one that stood out was:
//192.168.0.1/volume1/roms 2.8T 1.6T 1.2T 57% /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

So it looks like it's mounted. I went into file navigation that's built into retropie, and I navigated to home > pi > retropi > roms and I could see all the files on the hard drive. I have some PSX and GC games there that I haven't loaded up yet, so I know it's not on the SD card.

However, none of them are showing up in the launcher.

I've added uid and gid parameters, and it doesn't seem to help.

Am I missing something? Running scrape again doesn't pull up additional games. Is there some sort of import thing I'm missing?

mitu

@zalterego36 said in Issues Running ROMs from FTP:

Am I missing something? Running scrape again doesn't pull up additional games. Is there some sort of import thing I'm missing?

Check if the pi user can write to the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms folder. If yes, restart EmulationStation and see if your games show up.

zalterego36

@mitu said in Issues Running ROMs from FTP:

Check if the pi user can write to the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms folder.

Here's what I did...

I ran, ls -l /home/pi/RetroPie/roms
It returned, drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 0 May 7 03:59 for all the subfolders in 'roms'.

It looked like all the permissions where there (correct me if I'm wrong), but I decided to throw everything at the wall. I ran sudo chmod 777 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

Again it returned drwxr-xr-x 2 pi pi 0 May 7 03:59 for all the sub-folders in Roms.

I rebooted and still no change. Can I force a library update? Or is that a Kodi thing?

mitu

@zalterego36 Can you restart EmulationStation only, without rebooting ?

Or exit EmulationStation, then run it with

emulationstation --debug

and post the output.

zalterego36

@mitu said in Issues Running ROMs from FTP:

restart EmulationStation only

No joy on the software restart. Here's the output from debug:

May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "mastersystem" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/megadrive" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "megadrive" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/msx" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "msx" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl2:   Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/n64/gamelist.xml"...
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/neogeo" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "neogeo" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl2:   Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/nes/gamelist.xml"...
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ngp" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "ngp" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ngpc" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "ngpc" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pcengine" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "pcengine" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/psx" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "psx" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl2:   Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/retropie/gamelist.xml"...
May 13 07:47:51 lvl2:   Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/sega32x/gamelist.xml"...
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/segacd" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "segacd" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/sg-1000" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "sg-1000" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl2:   Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/snes/gamelist.xml"...
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/vectrex" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "vectrex" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum" is not a directory!
May 13 07:47:51 lvl1:   System "zxspectrum" has no games! Ignoring it.
May 13 07:47:52 lvl3:   SystemView::getViewElements()

I can't make much sense of it. The only thing that stands out to me is that the PSX one is coming up as 'Not a Directory'.

zalterego36

@zalterego36 said in Issues Running ROMs from FTP:

PSX one is coming up as 'Not a Directory'

Wait. I fixed that one. I'm apparently an idiot and had capitalized it. Lord, I'm sorry about that.

I think it's working! I'm going to test it out a bit.

EDIT: It looks like everything is working, but NES, SNES, GBA, and N64 games are blinking for some reason. Like, they lose video randomly. But I don't think that's a problem with the network...PSX, 32x, and GBC are working. I'll poke at it a bit and see if I can find something else.

zalterego36

@mitu

I wanted to thank you properly, it seems like I'm up and running ~~aside from some issues with a few games (NES, SNES, GBA, and N64) blinking. But I'll figure that out on my own (or I'll make a separate post...).~~ Fixed! Needed to uncomment HDMI_drive=2 on /boot/config.txt. Just leaving that behind for anyone else having the issue.

Seriously, thank you very much. Even my saves are going into the drive now!