Box86 and Wine on RPi4

George

Thanks for the log, @folly.

I have to look at the output of ps -ef more deeply. There are many things running that I don't have running (LXDE/OpenBox, Chromium, Pulse Audio, etc.). Any one of those things could be stressing out the CPU, causing the temperature to rise and slowing things down. But it's just a guess so far.

I can say your temperature is much higher than what I am seeing with my Pi4. Mine has a big heat sink and fan, so it runs at about 39.0'C. Here's my output when just running EmulationStation:

temp=39.0'C
throttled=0x0
frequency(46)=277646496
frequency(48)=700154304

Perhaps try running those commands when everything is running smoothly.

Interestingly, your frequencies on the first run are higher than mine, but your CPU frequency on the second item is lower. And of course, neither times is it showing that there is throttling going on.

In other news, I think I've been able to trace an audio issue back to Timidity. I found my Pi4 not outputting any audio today. Running the following command resolved the issue without having to restart the Pi4.

sudo service timidity restart

Perhaps see if this will resolve your audio issues too, and maybe even the performance issue. If so, we might want to consider removing Timidity from the Wine installation and only put it into the Space Cadet installation, only turning it on when the program runs, and then turning it off when Space Cadet exits.

Can you also run the following and send the output:

dpkg -l | grep -i fbturbo

- George

Folly

@george

Thanks for looking at it.

I can say your temperature is much higher than what I am seeing with my Pi4.

Earlier on I had a fan on it, but had the same issues.

There are many things running that I don't have running (LXDE/OpenBox, Chromium, Pulse Audio, etc.). Any one of those things could be stressing out the CPU, causing the temperature to rise and slowing things down. But it's just a guess so far.

Indeed, It can, but I have no problem when I run an other the OS from another media (that has not box86/wine installed yet). It could also be the usb stick, or the pi can't supply enough power to the usb stick. I have to check this again with a new install on a harddrive with box86/wine installed also.

Another thing is, that pulseaudio is now installed if you update your raspberry pi OS. Seems that sometimes this will break the audio. Strange thing was, that it is not always installed when you upgrade. My harddrive had still alsa only. yesterday I did a "sudo apt dist-upgrade" and now it did install pulsaudio with a good volume icon.
It could be, when you do only "sudo apt upgrade" it doesn't upgrade as it should, breaking the audio. Here you can find more about it :
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-raspberry-pi-os-release-december-2020/

I think I've been able to trace an audio issue back to Timidity.

Nice job ! ;-)

Here is the output of the command you wanted to know :

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ dpkg -l | grep -i fbturbo
ii  gldriver-test                        0.6                                 all          Enable/disable fbturbo when OpenGL driver is used

ps.
We can use the konami remakes legally for box86/wine, read this :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10918/where-to-legally-acquire-content-to-play-on-retropie/296

Folly

@george

I am already busy with an install on a powered usb 3.0 harddrive.
Using RetroPie-Setup 4.7.7 now.
I have already installed the mesa supplementary.
Now I am trying to install the box86 emulator.
It fails to detect the mesa supplementary.

log said :
rp_getIdxFromId command not found.
Looks like this command isn't supported anymore.

I commented the if function to install box86.

Had the same issue with installing wine, also commented the lines.
Removed timidy from the depends to check if there is improvement.
WoW, wine configuration was fast and ended before RetroPie-Setup got back in the menu !

Do you have an idea to fix the depedancy checks for box86 and wine ?

Tested a while without timidity, worked good.

Installed timidity manually and installed spacecadet3dpinball again.
(spacecadet3dpinball got stuck in the check also, same problem, commented also the IF function)
All works good, music and sound is working from the hdmi audio port.

Well, tested all for quite a while now and up till now it works quite good :-)
(lets say 4 hours)

mth75

@folly said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

p_getIdxFromId comm

I adjusted script and removed the lines in which the box86 and mesa installs are detected (or not). This enabled me to complete the installs.

Folly

@mth75 said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

@folly said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

p_getIdxFromId comm

I adjusted script and removed the lines in which the box86 and mesa installs are detected (or not). This enabled me to complete the installs.

Yes indeed, did the same thing ;-)

George

@folly said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

rp_getIdxFromId command not found.

Thanks @Folly. I'll take a look at what happened to rp_getIdxFromId and see if there is a replacement.

- George

George

@folly said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

We can use the konami remakes legally for box86/wine, read this :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10918/where-to-legally-acquire-content-to-play-on-retropie/296

Thanks @Folly, this is cool. I've been looking at some of the recent commits for RetroPie and it looks like there is a new feature enabling external repositories for modules, which might be good for this use case. That would mean that once we get things figured out with installation directory, ports vs. emulator, etc. A whole repository can be created for the Konami remakes.

What do you think?

- George

George

@george said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

I'll take a look at what happened to rp_getIdxFromId and see if there is a replacement.

Looks like this functionality was removed at about the same time I submitted my pull request for the script modules. But it also looks like some functionality may still exist and be simpler to make sure the chain still works. I'll do some work and update my scripts. I'll also test doing a dist upgrade to see where Pulse Audio is getting installed and how it affects things.

Thanks again!

- George

Folly

@george said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

@folly said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

We can use the konami remakes legally for box86/wine, read this :
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/10918/where-to-legally-acquire-content-to-play-on-retropie/296

Thanks @Folly, this is cool. I've been looking at some of the recent commits for RetroPie and it looks like there is a new feature enabling external repositories for modules, which might be good for this use case. That would mean that once we get things figured out with installation directory, ports vs. emulator, etc. A whole repository can be created for the Konami remakes.

What do you think?

- George

Yes indeed, I read that also about external repositories.
Pretty good idea !

I just did an experiment on my usb3.0 stick, because I found this :
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/101388/sata-3-ssd-too-slow-on-raspberry-pi-4-even-with-external-power
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=245931

I turned uas off for my stick in boot/cmdline.txt

So I will have to test here and there, but I think this could be the solution.
Tested, still slow after a while, perhaps there is some corruption going on.
I think I will wipe that stick and try fresh again.

Folly

@George

Today my HDMI audio was gone again (in the desktop enviroment).
I removed timidity, did a shutdown and checked the cables.
Then booted my pi again and my HDMI audio was back again.
I don't know if timidity is causing this, but I thought you should know.

h2805270

Here's a treat for you people.

I still have the SpaceCadet Pinball game installation .EXE (it's freeware, so no harm done):

=========================

mitu

@h2805270 said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

I still have the SpaceCadet Pinball game installation .EXE (it's freeware, so no harm done):

Didn't know it's freeware - do you have a reference to that ?

h2805270

@mitu
"Abandonware" is a more appropriate terminology in the case of this game, but yes. The original release/full game "Full Tilt Pinball" is classified as such:
-========================-

The Windows Game is just an altered downgraded Demo Port of the original game, re-written in the C language (for wider CPU compatibility).

Windows itself dropped it from Vista because of a collision bug in the 64-bit version they couldn't fix (works fine on Windows 10).

They tried reviving the licence in 2018 as a "Microsoft Garage" project, but Cinematronics refused to give them the rights because of some complicated "only for Windows 95" mumbo-jumbo.

In short, it's as good as most MS-DOS games.

mitu

@h2805270 said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

"Abandonware" is a more appropriate terminology in the case of this game, but yes[..]

In this case, please remove the download link - without a release or distribution license, it's just a regular copyrighted game.

h2805270

@mitu
I really hate it when developers leave their games to rot indefinitely, but still keep a leash over them like they're going to earn any money from it today.

George

Thanks anyway @h2805270!

George

Hi @Folly and @mth75. Some updates on my end.

I did a clean install and did a full on apt-get dist-upgrade and updated RetroPie to 4.7.7. I'm testing out modifications to my script to detect what has been installed. Looks like things have gotten simpler and I can just do the following as an example:

if ! rp_isInstalled "wine" ; then

I also am experimenting with a couple of lines which detect if a person is running at least RetroPie 4.7.7, since it's pretty much a requirement now that the method for detecting installed script modules has changed. If my scripts get accepted into RetroPie, that won't be necessary, as they'll automatically be part of the later versions.

I'm installing things and running some tests. So far so good. I'll be on the lookout for audio issues (via Timidity) and performance slow downs. @Folly, thanks for the tip on UAS. I had found out about compatibility issues just a few months ago on my Ubuntu Desktop when I bought a Seagate USB 3.0 hard drive for backup purposes. Makes sense that it might affect Raspberry Pi as well. In my case, the system was spamming the log file with UAS error messages like crazy. You may want to check /var/log/ for a massive log file that gets added to constantly. The toughest part is that it's evidently such a common problem that there are several posts about it on various forums for various Linux based operating systems. So the idea that almost every USB 3.0 hard drive should be UAS compatible is probably a bit of an overstatement. The solution is quite a bit of work as well, considering the issue is fairly common, it would have made sense to simplify it. But I digress.

I've been playing around with my script modules as "external" script modules. It works rather well! It could definitely be the solution for the ever increasing number of applications people want to cram onto their RetroPie boxes. Of course, I'd like the box86/wine script modules to become part of the RetroPie master repo. :-) I could see this as being a great option for single game ports though! I can see a conflict arising when two different repos have a script module with the same name though. One will be chosen over another. I'll have to submit that feedback somewhere.

Anyway, if I make any further progress, I'll let you know!

- George

Folly

@george

Great to hear you found a solution and that you could use my UAS suggestion ;-)

I am always testing your script both ways.
From the terminal so I can see how it would react with an original RetroPie and if the games are in fullscreen.

I test also in the desktop enviroment.
What I see here is that wine is always installing mime types for fast opening of files. I you open a file with a wine application it doesn't work(you get sandbox only) and I prefer to use linux programs over wine. So I renamed this file to .bak manually to get rid of this (perhaps an idea to implement) :
/home/pi/.local/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache.bak

When you install software you get desktop icons, that is nice, but the desktop icons don't work because they have no good command to load the software in the desktop enviroment. So pehaps there is a way to prefent installing desktop icons on the linux desktop or else, that desktop icons are installed with the correct load command.

Is this some good feedback for you ?

mth75

@george said in Box86 and Wine on RPi4:

Anyway, if I make any further progress, I'll let you know!

Thx for the update. In the meantime, i'm pumping out wine prefixes :-).

Which brings me to the other question regarding, how to install games. I think the only solution in a Retropie env. for end users is installing games with winetricks and configuring all opt and config files manual. I don't see another solution.

mth75

@George I have to start almost all games multiple times before xinit actually starts. I believe this is a well known xinit problem?, is there anything we can do about that?