Emulation station freezing

mitu

There's no errors in the system log, the freeze is not logging any GPU/driver issue. Can you try to upgrade (from your working image), but omitting the kernel update ? It might be something related to the new 5.4.x kernel/firmware that's causing this.

mahoneyt944

@mitu yes I'll try and report back.

mahoneyt944

Updated without updating the kernal. So far I'm not getting any freezes but I'll update this as I get more time running.

mahoneyt944

Well that was short lived. Got another freeze

mahoneyt944

I'm going to revert the update all together and see if I get any freezes. If so, I'll update to a new image, reload everything and test again. Updates to come.

Edit: reverted to 4.6, been running for 8+ hours. No freezes yet.

mitu

If it's something in EmulationStation, could be one of these changes, but I can't say there's one that affects the Pi platform so much. The GLES2 renderer is not used at the moment and I don't see other radical changes that would cause this kind of freeze.

Assuming it's EmulationStation that's the culprit, you could try bisecting with git to find the faulty commit.

mahoneyt944

@mitu I'd imagine the commits from 4.6 to 4.7.1 are probably a decent amount to sort. Im not sure what the best approach would be. From what I've tested though, it seems to be within ES or at least occuring while ES is running. I was able to leave the rpi3 running in mame2003-plus overnight without a freeze but leaving it in ES freezes after about 10 minutes. Maybe we can see if anyone can replicate the freeze?

mitu

@mahoneyt944 said in Emulation station freezing:

I'd imagine the commits from 4.6 to 4.7.1 are probably a decent amount to sort.

It the issue is in ES, the diff is not that large - I actually posted the list of commits in the previous post.

We can wait to see if someone else reports a problem.

mahoneyt944

@mitu well.....I use a slideshow screensaver, kiosk mode, carbon theme - detailed - fade. I'm guessing it's ES because the pi is still fully accessable over network after a freeze and it doesn't freeze during emulation. I am currently using the exact rom, bios, config and splashscreen directories in my 4.6 build successfully without freezes so I don't think it's a setting issue. Unless there's a setting that no longer works in the new build? I don't customize es in anyway significant.

If anyone has 4.7.1 setup let your pi sit idle in es for a few hours and see if it freezes?

mahoneyt944

Not much to update here, but to say I've been running this build on retropie 4.6 for over 3 days continuously without any freeze issues. So reverting to an earlier build fixed the issue.

mahoneyt944

Revisiting this issue, while updating from 4.6.8 to the latest 4.7.11 now available I experience random freezing in emulationstation like before. I have a backup of 4.6.8 that does not freeze. I have this installed in my arcade cabinet that's always on. Sometimes it freezes while navigating the es menu and other times during the screen saver (slideshow). I use the default theme.

This feels like a setting or maybe theme issue? I've been experimenting with other options. Haven't found anything yet.

mitu

Can you try and build from source (with debugging info enabled) and run EmulationStation through gdb to see where it freezes ?

# create a sources folder
mkdir src && cd src

# get the stable branch
git clone --depth 1 --branch stable --recursive https://github.com/retropie/emulationstation

# generate build files
cd emulationstation && mkdir build
CXXFLAGS="-g" cmake -B build -DRPI=On -DUSE_GLES1=On -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug .

# build it
make -C build -j2

# run through gdb
gdb -q ./emulationstation

# at the gdb prompt, start emulationstation with debug
(gdb) run --debug

When it freezes, see if gdb has any messages shown (perhaps ES crashed or encountered an exception). If nothing is shown, press Ctrl + C and type where. gdb should show the location - in the source - where emulationstation is running.

You can run the above from a SSH session. If you don't want to keep a session open until EmulationStation freezes, you can use screen to run the commands and detach from the running session without stopping gdb.

Can you also post your es_settings.cfg (from $HOME/.emulationstation) to pastebin.com ? I may try to run it with these settings and see if something happens.

mahoneyt944

@mitu ok I ran gdb and it just froze. How do I check what gdb has? I'm sitting on a emulationstation "arcade" screen frozen right now.

Keyboard not responsive, networking still working over filezilla from another computer

mahoneyt944

https://pastebin.com/4qWMgeJY

mitu

@mahoneyt944 Did you start gdb via SSH ? Otherwise you won't have access to it if ES freezes.

mitu

@mahoneyt944 I added the config file to my Pi3 and left it running. Let's see if something comes up. For a moment there I was confused why I couldn't scrape, until I realized your config has Kiosk mode turned on.

mahoneyt944

@mitu I don't have ssh setup. It might be easier for me just to give you a private copy of my image to test out. It's not all that big. 4.5gb

mitu

I've left ES staying idle with the config you sent and it hasn't freezed so far. I'll leave it on longer, but I don't think it's the configuration that's causing the issue.

It might be easier for me just to give you a private copy of my image to test out. It's not all that big. 4.5gb

That might help, but it would be easier to just use the RetroPie latest image (4.7.1) and see if you can reproduce the issue with it. You can transfer your configs over (see here) after you run a full update of RetroPie-Setup and the OS.

mahoneyt944

@mitu sure I'll try reimaging and report back. Though, it's irritating to not know why exactly. I have another rpi3 build using 4.6.8 as well I can try updating on too to see if it bugs out.

What gets me is I use the 4.6.8 image 24/7 in my arcade cabinet build with no issues.

mahoneyt944

just an update,

I reimaged then updated to 4.7.11 then copied over my stuff. Seemed to work well at first but then I got a freeze. So I started reverting stuff.

Right now I believe the issue is related to my config.txt I started reverting each custom setting I had one by one and it seems the freeze is caused by gpu_freq=500. Haven't had much testing on this yet but if this is it, that means for some reason this setting no longer work for me on 4.7.11 like it was on 4.6.8 running 24/7.