Running ROMs from a Network Share

Solex

Hello i'm very new at this. Is it possible to have both so it loads some Roms from sd card and some Roms from Network drive? And when i i'm out of range it only loads from sd card.

I have the same question regarding having some Roms on sd card and some on USB drive is that also possible. Så when i have Network drive online it runs on sd card and Network drive and when i connect USB driv it uses all 3 drives all this automatic no change everytime i connect and diaconnect a drive? Maybe a restart but nothing more 🙄🙄🤔

zehjrack

Hi All,

I gave option 1 a shot, folders appear to mount correctly and everything looks good in ES but MAME (/Mame-Libretro) games wont load (FBA games run fine!), when attempting to play a game it looks like it is going to load (black screen for 5-10 seconds) then it reverts back to the MAME menu. Running the game locally from the SD card runs fine so I know it isn't an issue with the ROM file (testing with 1944.zip).

Initially I suspected it was a permission issue; I double checked that all files were not set to read-only, I played around with mount command and eventually added uid=1000,gid=1000, pi user now has ownership of ~/RetroPie (screenshot attached), I can create folders/files etc via console and I see them populate on my network share but MAME games still fail to load...unfortunately I have run out of thing to try, any suggestions?

Share: NTFS (Server 2012R2)
Pi Model: 3B
Image: 4.0.2 (ran update script after 4.1 was released)
Mount Command: sudo mount -t cifs -o username=xxx,password=xxx,uid=1000,gid=1000 //10.0.0.100/arcade /home/pi/RetroPie

Thanks for your help!

Jeero

@zehjrack
Hi,
i have finally succeeded to use the option 1 too (in switching on/off the option which permits to have emulationstarted automatically run at startup, it seems that it "activate" the use of Autostart.sh file)

i personally had no similar issue with Mame roms, but i remarks you were putting them in /Mame-Libretro folder, and i'm putting them in Arcarde folder.
Maybe you can try this way ?

Regards,
Jeero.

jrhessey

Has anyone figured out why the retropie menu option in emulation station goes missing when you have load the roms over the network? I've seen a couple of posts in this topic pointing that out and when I mount mine, the retropie menu in emulation station goes missing as well.

jpxdude

I haven't looked into this for ages, but I remember this happening to me too. Sounds silly, but it is worth checking that the 'retropiemenu' directory has also been copied to your share, as this didn't transfer over for me when I first tried it. It would be because either that directory is missing in the shared area of your network, or a permissions issue at a guess.

zehjrack

@Jeero
Unfortunately no success using the arcade folder either, but, it did lead me to the runcommand log file (/dev/shm/runcommand.log), output below, it seems as though it isn't able to extract/view the contents of the zip file for some reason, which is weird because my FBA roms are in .zip format and they work fine, no difference in permissions between the two folders.

I did some additional testing and Master System and SNES games have the exact same issue too so it isn't just limited to MAME, but at least they output the error "Failed to extract content from compressed file" in yellow text at the bottom left of the screen when attempting to load the game which I don't get with MAME.

Also I think @jpxdude answered your question re the retropie menu, but just in case, ftp into retropie and copy the retropiemenu folder to your network share and reboot, should resolve your issue.

Parameters:
Executing: /opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-mame2003/mame2003_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/arcade/retroarch.cfg "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/a$
nffu.03 NOT FOUND
nff.04 NOT FOUND
nffu.05 NOT FOUND
nffux.03 NOT FOUND
nff.13 NOT FOUND
nff.15 NOT FOUND
nff.17 NOT FOUND
nff.19 NOT FOUND
nff.14 NOT FOUND
nff.16 NOT FOUND
nff.18 NOT FOUND
nff.20 NOT FOUND
nff.01 NOT FOUND
nff.11 NOT FOUND
nff.12 NOT FOUND
ERROR: required files are missing, the game cannot be run.

zehjrack

@Jeero
So just for kicks I decided to give option 2 a shot, my games work fine now lol.

gavster2002

All, I did manage to fix the retropie menu missing bug by slightly modifying the mount command to add 'roms' to the path. It is now all working perfectly :)

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=something,password=something //hostname/retropie/roms /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

Gav

Jeero

@zehjrack Ok we have both no more issues, even if it's different configurations, everybody is happy, that's the most important :p

tsull360

Hello,
Thanks everyone for putting this info together. I'm close to getting things working, but whenever I mount my share and do an ls ~/RetroPie I receive a message that says 'Access Denied'. Without mounting my share, I can see the contents of RetroPie, but of course its not loading my ROMS from the network.

I've granted the account I'm using on my network 'Full Control' of the folder holding my ROMS. Its folder structure is:

\server\Software\RetroPie\ROMS

My fstab has the following line:
//natssp02/software/RetroPie/ROMS /home/pi/RetroPie cifs credentials=/home/pi/.smbcredentials,uid=pi 0 0

Based on turning on auditing on my server, I can see the connection being made to my file server, so I'm not sure why access is being denied. Any pointers?

sabelstrom

I have been trying this, but cant get it to work.

My shared folder is this ftp://192.168.2.1/FTP/Konsolspel/
In this folder roms, bios, splashscreens and configs folder exists.

I am using a PI3 with the latest RetroPie.

How do i know that the /home/pi/RetroPie/ is the right path?

The ip to the PI is 192.168.2.176

carpi

Hi RetroPie people,

I mounted my NAS server to my pi by modifying the autostart.sh file using the guide on github. Everything works fine except when the pi boots into emulation station the RetroPie menu is no longer there for me to adjust any settings. The only way I can get it to come up is to disable the command in autostart.sh that mounts the NAS server and reboot the pi. If anyone has any suggestions as to why the menu is disappearing and how to resolve it, they would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Carpi

Pi Model: 3 Model B
RetroPie Version Used: 4.1
Built From:(Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: Keyboard / Wireless Xbox 360 Receiver
Controller used: Xbox 360
Guide used: Running ROMs from a network share

BuZz

@carpi Do you have the "retropiemenu" folder on the network drive ?

You can re-install retropiemenu from Manage Packages -> Main Section > retropiemenu which will put the required files back.

can run RetroPie-Setup manually over SSH to do this - https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/ssh

carpi

@BuZz Problem solved. I didn't have a copy of the folder on the network drive. Thanks so much for the quick help :)

sabelstrom

Now i have tried som more with out any good results.

This is what i have tested:

autostart.sh
sudo mount -t cifs -o username=something,password=something ftp://192.168.2.1/FTP/Konsolspel/ /home/pi/RetroPie

and
sudo mount -t cifs -o username=something,password=something //192.168.2.1/FTP/Konsolspel/ /home/pi/RetroPie

But when i run ls RetroPie after reboot it is the local folder that comes up.

Do i need a RetroPie folder on my ftp?

My ftp is a USB disk plugged in to my router, when i use the ip in my browser or explorer i only come to the router login screen.

But if i use ftp admin@ 192.168.2.1 in explorer i get to the ftp folder.

What am i doing wrong?

BuZz

@sabelstrom you should really start a new thread if you have problems rather than adding to existing threads (after reading https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first)

You can't mount an ftp server like that. that line is for mounting a windows share (via cifs filesystem).

sabelstrom

Ok, I will start new thread.

I feel confused when Running ROMs from a Network Share tells me this "I found FTP to be favorable"

But i can understand it wrong.

I Used this thread because i thought they had a way to get FTP work and when i tested it didn work, that is why i asked the people that i thought solved it instead of creating a new thread.

Sailing_Nut

This post is deleted!

thundercrack

I tested this a lot trying to use NFS for /home but I get "Failed to extract content from compressed file" when ROMs are selected. Then I tried mounting NFS at /home/pi and it failed the same way. I also tried changing the ROM dir to something completely outside of /home/pi, updated the conf to reflect the change, but it still wasn't able to uncompress ROMs when selected. So it sounds like a bug. A really, really annoying bug.

I changed everything over to sshfs and it's just fine now. I did not try CIFS. An added benefit now though is this will allow me to take my pi anywhere and as long as I update /etc/fstab and have an internet connection I'll have access to the ROMs. I could have done it with nfs but it's more annoying to setup and secure to the outside world like that.

Smolky

Model: PcCom Raspberry Pi 2 B
Power supply: Network loader USB 2A (translated from Spanish to English, not sure if correct)
Retropie version: 4.1
Built From: Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: Wireless Keyword and mouse
Controller used: XBOX Wireless gamepad
Emulator: SNES
Guide used: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Running-ROMs-from-a-Network-Share (and this topic)
Other: Raspberry is connected to the LAN using an ethernet cable (not wireless)

Hi everyone. My issue is that I have configured my retropie to fetch the roms from my desktop computer. After reboot the retropie all worked fine except that I found that the game speed of snes (the only emulator I have tested) is slower. I notice both in the music and the game speed like if was running at a minor frame rate

As you can see, I configured my fstab to fetch only the roms (not bios, config, ...)

//ip-host/retropie/roms /home/pi/RetroPie/roms cifs username=my-username,paassword=my-password,noserverino,defaults,users,auto 0 0

After that, I have commented the fstab line, reboot the retropie and all worked as usual.

Any of you have experienced something similar? Thanks and sorry about my English