Running ROMs from a Network Share

pappabees

OK just wanted to share how I got this to work every time quite simply. Might be stated here didn't find it all in one place so here goes:

                      From the share server (my case Win10)

add a share drive in my windows 10 server with read/write access to a single user in my case pappabees
```
                 From the RetroPie 
```
sudo nano /etc/fstab
add the following line:
//<Servername>/Retropi_Roms /home/pi/RetroPie cifs noauto,credentials=/home/pi/.smbcredentials,uid=1000,gid=1000,forcegid,forceuid
Note the noauto makes it so it doesn't come online while the network is still coming up. solves that issue, created security file so you don't have userid/pass in plain site. Also the GID and UID sets the directory to be owned by the PI user so that takes care of the R/W access.
sudo nano /home/pi/.smbcredentials
create a file in the ~home directory called .smbcredentials note this file has a dot (.) in the name
in that file add the following 2 lines
username=<add your username on the windows 10 box that has R/W to the share>
password=<add password to above username>
Ex. username=pappabes
password=nicetry!2
There is a 3rd line you can add if your on a domain but most homes don't use this domain=(domain)

Change the permissions of the file to prevent unwanted access to your credentials:
4) sudo chmod 600 ~/.smbcredentials

Now lets add the mount command after everything is booted
5) sudo nano /etc/rc.local
add to the end of the file before the exit 0 line the following line
sudo mount //<Servername>/<sharename>
example sudo mount //bell-server/RetroPie_Share

sudo reboot

Once your back up you should be able to ssh to your box and do a df and see your new sharedrive

Hopefully this will help us beginners a with one quick spot until the RetroPie Gods smile on us and add this feature which if I read this thread correctly may come some day.

Note: Got a few error (13) issues and found in my case that I had misspelled some share names or directory names and had to really slow down and double check spellings :-)

mouser

I've followed the instructions in this guide and can see the roms on my share within Emulation Station, but trying to run any of them just immediately bumps back out to the ES menu.

If I don't mount the share in autostart.sh and copy the same roms from the share to the appropriate directory on the RP3, the roms run just fine. I've checked that the (Windows 10) share user has read/write permissions and that the properties on the shared folder do not include "Read Only" for anything in the shared filesystem.

Any thoughts on where my problem might lie?

pina

I ran through all the steps via option #1, but retropie still copies the roms to the internal SD instead of the NAS.

First I made a new network share:

//retropie

with the following folders:

/home/pi/Retropie/BIOS
/home/pi/Retropie/roms

I enabled ssh (I'm working through Bootberry)
Using terminal in Mac, I SSH to my retropie
sudo raspi-config -> Boot options, wait for network
edit autostart.sh : sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=xxx,password=xxx //192.168.11.100/retropie/home/pi/RetroPie /home/pi/RetroPie

then sudo reboot

Whenever I place a rom into, retropie keeps taking the internal SD as source and not my NAS. I don't know what went wrong in here, stayed almost all night up to figure it out :((

Guy-Sensei

I have successfully enabled network share by following the wiki and although it didn't work at first, I did more research and added uid=1000,gid=1000 to the mounting line and it has been working flawlessly. However, after a bit of testing, I discovered that lr-snes9x won't load MSU-1 games (it just plays the rom with original sound and no videos) - and lr-mame2003 simply won't load roms at all.... However, they work fine if I run the exact same rom files using the same emulators from the microSD rather than over network.

Here's my setup:

RPi 3B:

NOT overclocked
CanaKit 2.5A Power Supply
32Gb SanDisk MicroSD
HDMI output
Ethernet wired connection
Updated RetroPie Setup script and latest updates for lr-snes9x and lr-mame2003
autostart.sh modified to mount network rom folder from desktop running windows. Added line: sudo mount -t cifs -o username=XXXX,password=XXXX,uid=1000,gid=1000 //DESKTOP/retropie/ /home/RetroPie/roms (i don't understand exactly how this works, but this is what I do to enable network share and it wouldn't work unless I added the uid and gid parameters. Username and password obviously replaced with Windows username and password)

Desktop:

Windows 10
Roms located in shared folder on 3TB secondary exFAT partition (F: drive)
Also ethernet wired connection on same home network

The following things do not work unless I disable the network share and run the exact same roms with the same emulators from the microSD card locally:

Snes MSU-1 roms:
I patched the games correctly and am able to get them to work on lr-snes9x ONLY if I run the exact same files directly off the microSD. Network share doesn't work for some reason - the games will play fine but I don't get the new music or video. I tested Megaman X, Rock n Roll Racing, Secret of Mana, and Zelda.

lr-mame2003 0.78 romset:
I have the correct romsets verified with clrmamepro (it says "You have 4719 of 4720 known MAME 0.78 sets (+ BIOS sets)" after scanning).
They are all located in the roms/arcade folder
Tried running a bunch of roms at random including UMK3, MK2, Ergheiz, and Pac-Man. None of them loaded.
Tried running the same roms from the microSD and they work fine.

I wonder if these issues can be fixed. I assume the programmers must be able to fix it somehow. I'm just not sure who I should notify or where to post this.

Besides that, the network share works surprisingly well with almost anything else including PSP and PS1. I'm very happy with this feature overall. Thank you!

dyers

Can anyone confirm that they are able to run zipped roms over the network shares? I've setup a network mapping to the entire /home/pi/RetroPie folder and copied the data over scp to my windows file server. Everything shows up but only non zip roms work, i noticed the pattern and then unzipped a single file from each emulator and indeed it's the compressed files that create a problem. Has anyone else run into this? I'm using a pi3. I've tried option 1 and 2 from the guide and both have the same impact.
I do have an upgraded install so my next step is to totally start over.

Edit: adding some more details, I've checked the logs, they appear identical to working launches, some emulators just stall doing nothing, shift+x brings retroarch menu up, so it isn't hung. Other's just bomb back to the rom list.

dyers

My problem might be related to this: https://github.com/libretro/Lakka-LibreELEC/issues/115

Haris1977

@zehjrack i have the exact issue my self. Everything plays fine EXCEPT FOR mame roms..

I opened a new thread also here . Have y managed to fix it? I am out of ideas....

Haris1977

@spieddy said in Running ROMs from a Network Share:

to modify Fstab and everyting works fine

How did y do that? I am having same issue with my mame roms. All other roms are ok.

Anyone else is having problem with mame roms (not working)?

Haris1977

Well i ve finally managed to run all of my games (mame roms too) by just following option 2 (unfortunately option 1 didnt work 4 me) from here. I ve also managed to wake my nas server first (as most of the time is in "sleeping" state) , wait some time (in order for the samba to work) and then mount the samba share. Works as expected.

Thanks again for the info :-)

Guy-Sensei

@haris1977 Would you mind giving more details about how you solved this? Specifically, what is your command in fstab for option 2?
I have the same problem (see my post above from 2 months ago).

ringnutz

@guy-sensei

I had the exact same issue. It is not the fstab part that is important here but the options. Specifically one of "nounix,noserverino,defaults,users,auto". I have not deduced which one fixed it, but I am using the Autostart.sh and it works fine as follows

sudo mount -t cifs -o gid=1000,uid=1000,username=USER,password=PASS,domain=DOMAIN,nounix,noserverino,defaults,users,auto //192.168.X.X/SHARENAME /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

Note that you may not need domain above for your share.

After unmounting and remounting the share using the above arguments, I am now able to launch Mame2003 Roms just fine.

Haris1977

@guy-sensei sorry for the late answer

Mine fstab looks like this:

//192.168.X.XXX/SHARENAME /home/pi/RetroPie cifs username=XXX,password=XXX,nounix,noserverino,defaults,users,auto 0 0

proxypunk

I had serious trouble getting Samba share to work!
After hours of trying, I figured out it has something to do with the network interface not being ready, although I enabled waiting for network on boot.
Finally I ended up starting kodi before sudo mount and afterwards emulationstation in autostart.sh.
Like this:

kodi
sudo mount -t cifs -o sec=ntlm,user='username',password='password' //hostip/roms /home/pi/RetroPie/roms
emulationstation

Ofc, I gotta quit Kodi each time to get to EmulationStation. If you don't need Kodi, you could try it with sleep x (x=seconds to wait) instead.

nightmaresteam

For people using Windows 10 you need to have SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support enabled in windows features for this to work. I just enabled that and now my network share is working.

mitu

@proxypunk You could just add a sleep 8 before running emulationstation just so the mount succeeds before ES start and leave the normal mount working from fstab. If 8 seconds is not enough, you can start increasing the wait period until you get the correct number of seconds.

BlackMage

Found a solution to your save and scrapping issue. if you simply add:

,rw,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777

after the username and password in your autostart.sh it will give your write access and will allow you to scrap and save to the NAS

Just be sure that access permissions are set correctly on the Windows share, including all sub-folders that you wish to share or else it will still not work.

This allows you to keep saves and scraps on the network and for a setup like mine where i have multiple RetroPies in the house this allows me to create a save folder for each Pi that way we are not overwriting each others saves

EVH

Hi guys,

I need some help with running my roms from a Synology NAS.

Despite following the guide, I can't get any of my systems or games to appear in RetroPie. I've tried putting a line in autostart.sh which didn't work and I've tried using fstab to no avail :(

I'm running a pre-made image of the latest build - RetroPie 4.4 on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ connected to my home network via ethernet. My Synology NAS is running on IP 10.0.0.10 and has a "Media" cifs share with guest access.

The line I've added to autostart.sh is:

`sudo mount -t cifs -o username=xxxxx,password=xxxxx //10.0.0.10/Media/RetroPie/roms /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

If I try "sudo mount -a" I don't get any errors, but I still don't see what the issue is. I've even tried using the hostname of the server e.g. "SYNOLOGY" in the path and it doesn't work.

Help!

mitu

@evh If the share name is Media, then the mount command is not correct. You can't mount arbitrary folders inside a share, you should mount the share itself.
My advice is to create a different share and name it RetroPie-Roms, then follow the docs and add the share to the /etc/fstab file to be auto-mounted to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms. Restart and see if the share is correctly mounted, then restart Emulationstation and see if the ROMs from the share appear in the list.

EVH

@mitu said in Running ROMs from a Network Share:

@evh If the share name is Media, then the mount command is not correct. You can't mount arbitrary folders inside a share, you should mount the share itself.
My advice is to create a different share and name it RetroPie-Roms, then follow the docs and add the share to the /etc/fstab file to be auto-mounted to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms. Restart and see if the share is correctly mounted, then restart Emulationstation and see if the ROMs from the share appear in the list.

Makes sense, I'll try it later and update.

The docs suggest that the path can contain folders... which I wrongly assumed would work.

sudo mount -t cifs -o username=something,password=something **//REMOTEHOST/path/to/roms** /home/pi/RetroPie/roms

EVH

Well, I can confirm it still doesn’t work.

Mounting a cifs share called RetroPie and having all the usual folders inside didn’t work.

I even tried appending the path to 10.0.0.10/volume 1/RetroPie/roms thinking that maybe I needed the volume name but I couldn’t get it working.

I’m almost about to give up which is a shame because I’ve got a NAS full of roms that I want to use and only a 16GB SD card :(