Emulation station freezing

mitu

@mahoneyt944 It's possible that's a side effect of an updated kernel/firmware.

EDIT: do you have the same overclock settings in your other systems ? You can keep the kernel/firmware version and just upgrade RetroPie (i.e. say no to updating OS/kernel packages).

mahoneyt944

@mitu I've tried updating without doing the underlying kernal before but that didn't work either. I'll know after a few days or less if that was the setting or not that made a fuss with the system left on.

triforcexp

I'm experiencing the same issue on a rpi3b. Just upgraded from got knows which ancient version to latest yesterday and it freezes in a few seconds.

In my case I had
gpu_freq=500
v3d_freq=525

After commenting both those seems that is working ok, though I would like to keep them as they certainly help with N64 emulation.

I remember having issues like that about two years ago when updating and I ended up adding more gpu_mem, but that didn't help this time.

I'm curious which EmulationStation version comes with the 4.6.8 image so I could try to downgrade to it?

mitu

@triforcexp said in Emulation station freezing:

I'm curious which EmulationStation version comes with the 4.6.8 image so I could try to downgrade to it?

Referenced in a post above - 2.9.1 (see the change list).

mahoneyt944

@triforcexp unfortunately for me when I updated, even without the kernal update, it still freezes. For some reason the gpu_freq is effected after the update. I commented mine out as well but I'd be interested to know if a lower value will work at all without freezing. This needs dug into a bit more to figure out why this setting is problematic now.

triforcexp

@mitu Just installed 2.9.1 and still getting the same result if I leave the gpu overclock.

I'll try to bisect this. Sadly idk which version I had before but was on Stretch so...

mahoneyt944

@triforcexp I think mine was originally 4.6 updated to 4.6.8 if that helps anything.

triforcexp

@mahoneyt944 I'm checking directly over the EmulationStation version.
I went all the way back to 2.7.6 with the same result, so I'm not completely sure the problem is the ES version itself or some other component of the distro.

BTW, I thought that I could try playing around with the GL version and, albeit it didn't fix, I believe the RetroPie script is setting the GLES 1.0 define wrongly, and hence would always use GLES2 (?)

See https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/blob/064a1818ead9dce730ecf928f27860edddc8e745/es-core/src/renderers/Renderer_GLES10.cpp#L1

and

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/0212b0249c96b5b355c1d180f24cff1ae9937518/scriptmodules/supplementary/emulationstation.sh#L168

triforcexp

@mahoneyt944 I just went all the way down to 450 mhz with the same result, maybe staying alive just a bit longer.

mitu

@triforcexp said in Emulation station freezing:

BTW, I thought that I could try playing around with the GL version and, albeit it didn't fix, I believe the RetroPie script is setting the GLES 1.0 define wrongly, and hence would always use GLES2 (?)

You're confusing the CMake's option (USE_GLES1) with the C++ macro with a similar name. EmulationStation didn't have a GLES2 renderer until version 2.9.1 and it's specifically disabled on VC4 because of the poor performance.

Can you post the config.txt you have ? What version of kernel/firmware do you have ?

triforcexp

@mitu Yeah you are right. I would have named both the same though 😅

So here is my config.txt

disable_overscan=1
overscan_left=0
overscan_right=0
overscan_top=0
overscan_bottom=0
hdmi_mode=4

arm_freq=1300
dtparam=audio=on
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=6

gpu_mem=256 
gpu_freq=500 
v3d_freq=525 
usb_hid.mousepoll=0

I've tried removing v3d freq and moving gpu freq down to 450 without success.

dankcushions

@triforcexp said in Emulation station freezing:

sdram_freq=500

this caused my pi3 to be very unstable. i would remove all overclocks as a matter of course when you find instability. then if you must overclock, gradually introduce them one by one.

triforcexp

@dankcushions yeah but weirdly enough emulationstation is the only thing that freezes. Plus older versions worked just fine. If I leave the gpu freq with the default value works

thomas1234

@triforcexp still seeing freezing immediately after removing overclocking. I did the same thing in updating a really old version to buster and building ES from source.

mahoneyt944

@thomas1234 what I did was I built a fresh image then copied over a few settings at a time until I found what caused the freeze. Then I corrected that setting to fix my freezing issue.

thomas1234

@mahoneyt944 What setting was it that needed corrected? I have completely reverted config.txt

I guess I just need to start fresh.

mahoneyt944

@thomas1234 gpu_freq was effected after the update. Comment out any of these.

#gpu_freq= ?

roslof

Would like to confirm:

Since upgrading RetroPie to latest awhile back and also upgrading the RPi software with:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

The freeze occurs randomly, but only during the screensaver. I read above this was occurring with a slideshow. I use video, and each day return to a frozen video or a black screen.

Turning off GPU overclock dramatically affects some 3D system (N64, Dreamcast, Naomi, Atomiswave) so not a great option. Better to disable the screensaver, but that's such a great feature.

Has anybody been able to track down the source of the problem? ES update, or the Raspberry Pi upgrade?

roslof

@mahoneyt944 said in Emulation station freezing:

@thomas1234 gpu_freq was effected after the update. Comment out any of these.

#gpu_freq= ?

Clarifying: "after the update" of what? RPi software, or ES?

roslof

A couple of anecdotal data points:

The issue should not be with EmulationStation V2.9.6RP. I used to run it extensively without issue.
I've more recently been using EmulationStation-Dev V2.10.0RP-DEV without issue.

Then I updated Raspberry Pi software to latest and updated RetroPie Script. The later was common and I don't see any commits that should affect ES.

The freeze started here. #1 and #2 now freeze. Unless user-error on my side, the issue should reside with the Raspberry Pi software update (it did also update kernel). Possible a newer version of VLC. Not sure.

I'll see if I can find out more. It wouldn't be the first time a RPi upgrade adversely affected overclock settings.

Q: When updating Raspberry Pi software, is the output logged somewhere? I'd like to see what changed. It had been awhile, so A LOT changed.