Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick

gordonfreemanjr

So, I noticed I’m constantly getting the ‘device full’ prompt despite running roms from the 64 GB USB stick with easily 25% of the space available. I took a gander inside the Pi’s file system and apparently the roms are copied over. I deleted them all, rebooted - and they copied over again. Before that, I turned off the USB daemon service. What do I do?

I’m on Pi Zero.

dankcushions

@gordonfreemanjr what is the file structure of your usb drive? note there are specific directory name requirements for roms to RUN from it, rather than transfer: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/

I took a gander inside the Pi’s file system and apparently the roms are copied over.

how did you check this? if you are running roms from a USB drive, as per my link, they will still appear in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms (it uses a bind-mount), so if you delete them from there they should delete from the USB drive. i suspect you were never running from USB, but rather were transferring.

gordonfreemanjr

@dankcushions The file system (is that what you’re asking?) of the USB stick is FAT32. You actually might be right - but what do I do now?

gordonfreemanjr

@dankcushions Also: I deleted them from the SD card, as mentioned above, and they still are present on the USB stick.

dankcushions

@gordonfreemanjr

The file system (is that what you’re asking?) of the USB stick is FAT32

no, the file STRUCTURE. eg, what's the root directory called? read my link to see the relevance.

Also: I deleted them from the SD card, as mentioned above, and they still are present on the USB stick.

like i said, how did you check this? see what i've already said - if you're running FROM a usb drive, the roms still 'appear' on the SD card depending on how you check.

gordonfreemanjr

@dankcushions Oh my God, you were right. I just nuked my collection.

gordonfreemanjr

@dankcushions Anyway, I got a copy, so it’s reversable. I was convinced I knew how this works. I’m somehow weirded out right now.

What I did previously was:

format the USB stick to FAT32,
copy whole Retropie filesystem to usb/retropie-mount, so the roms folder patch is set to: usb/retropie-mount/RetroPie/roms/...
tweak Skyscraper to collect the media in the rom folders on the USB.

I thought I was good to go. What do I do now?

gordonfreemanjr

A thought: so if by deleting the roms from the SD card filesystem I’ve actually deleted them from the USB, it means they were there all this time, not copying over. Why the ‘device full’ then? I don’t get it.

mitu

@gordonfreemanjr said in Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick:

Why the ‘device full’ then? I don’t get it.

How much scraping have you done ? Did you also relocate the Skyscraper's cache folder to the USB ?
If you previously had a SDcard with games, they won't be removed from it and will still take space.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu I scraped 5-6 systems, but no videos. Also, I did tweak the Skyscraper config file to store the cache on the USB.

mitu

Remove the USB stick, then check where the space is going to - the ROMs folder, /var/log, '$HOME/.emulationstation`, etc.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Should I use the df command? (Sorry, I'm not fluent in terminal).

mitu

You can use du -sh <folder_name> to get the size of individual folders, df just reports the filesystems' size.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Ok, removed the USB - as I deleted the roms anyway - to copy the backup library. I ran the Pi without the USB and it was still low on space. I run the File Manager and roms were still on the SD card. I deleted them manually, rebooted. Boom: 3.1 GB used, 11 GB available. That’s more like it.

Now, two matters arise:

I’m swimming in parsing errors. The system can’t parse Settings file and returns a ton of XML errors (no document element found in /.emulationstation/gamelists/retropie/gamelist.xml and couple more regarding basically every emulated system (all in the .emulationstation directory)
What do I do to get this done right this time?
When tweaking Skyscraper config file I went for storing the media files inside the rom folders. I notoced however that also a Skyscraper cache folder exists separately on the same USB stick, containing the same data - media files, that is. Is it normal? Can I get rid of one of them?

mitu

Looks like you need to re-generate you gamelists from Skyscraper, after you re-configured it. You may want to re-install the retropiemenu package, if you removed the its gamelist.xml.
As for the cache folder - unless you're short of space, I advise to keep it if you intend to scrape again when you add new ROMs.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Got it.

One more thing: how does exactly the USB daemom service work? The tutorials say I should switch it off if I intend to run roms from a USB stick. How does one relate to another? Naturally, I don’t want the roms to get copied back to the SD.

mitu

Transferring ROMs from an USB stick is explained here - it expects a retropie folder on your USB stick. Running ROMs from an USB stick is explained here - it expects a retropie-mount folder to be present on your USB stick.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu So, apparently, thanks to your help, I finally god rid of the “no space left on device” prompt. Thanks!

However, despite reinstalling the Retropie Menu script, all the parsing problems are still here. Also, the Pi seems to look for gamelists for systems I don’t intend to use, such as PC or ScummVM.

Also, for some reason I can’t vacuum the Snes cache with Skyscraper. The system is just not on the vacuum list, all the others are there (including the empty PC system, which is odd).

Any ideas?

mitu

@gordonfreemanjr said in Roms keep copying over to the SD card from the USB stick:

Any ideas?

Post some logs on pastebin.com, the one from EmulationStation and from running the Skyscraper vacuum command.

gordonfreemanjr

@mitu Ok, so no wonder I can’t vacuum the cache: I’ve deleted the whole Skyscraper cache on this USB, leaving just the media folders inside the rom folders.

It also means I can’t update gamelists, as apparently they are generated from the cache, not from the contents of the media/rom folders.

I could probably copy the contents of the media folders to the cache folder, revacuum and re-generate the gamelists this way.

Still, this is the least of my problems, so let’s forget this for now:

It takes now the Pi over 40 minutes to boot. It’s very weird: the USB contains roms from 7 systems, about 30-34 GB of data, including the media files. There must something I’ve done wrong.
The “can’t parse Setting file” and a bunch of other parsing errors have disappeared. The only ones left are these referring to systems I’m not using: PC, Sega CD, Atari. There must to be some track of formerly present roms somewhere within the system.