Detecting if retropie is installed on a remote machine

mitu

@kiro said in Detecting if retropie is installed on a remote machine:

What I am trying to do is to add a functionality that will scan your local network for machines running retropie. I have the scanning running, but what I'm trying to see if there's some kind of 'signature' that will effectively mean that retropie is installed on that machine.

Yes, you're right - I was thinking about the scraping itself.

The easiest way to check for a RetroPie installation is by checking if the /opt/retropie folder exists. EmulationStation is installed in /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationtation.

To be honest, I'd use the same approach used by Skraper/ARRM - check for the roms share, since this doesn't need any SSH connection. This way you can support other ES installation (i.e. Windows) without requiring a RetroPie installation.

kiro

@mitu Hi, Thanks, that makes sense...I'll investigate into that direction, as a matter of fact, SSH is very easy for rpie images but difficult for other platforms. Although, when you install retropie under windows (or other platforms), will it automatically expose the roms directory as shares?

mitu

@kiro said in Detecting if retropie is installed on a remote machine:

Although, when you install retropie under windows (or other platforms), will it automatically expose the roms directory as shares?

RetroPie only works on Linux systems, Windows is not supported. EmulationStation though (even the RetroPie fork) can be compiled and run on Windows.

kiro

@mitu ok, got it... so eventually I can 'safely' assume that any 'remote' installation from retropie will be running under Linux (raspbian) and ssh will be available (unless disabled by the user). Right?

Thanks again!

mitu

@kiro said in Detecting if retropie is installed on a remote machine:

@mitu ok, got it... so eventually I can 'safely' assume that any 'remote' installation from retropie will be running under Linux (raspbian)

As far as RetroPie is concerned, yes - it's Linux only, though Raspbian (now Raspberry Pi OS) is not a strict requirement unless you're running it on a Pi. On a PC/other SBCs it can run over Ubuntu/Debian.

...and ssh will be available (unless disabled by the user). Right?

For Raspberry PI OS, SSH is not enabled by default - see SSH. Other distros may have it enabled by default if ssh is chosen during install, but it's not enabled by default on RetroPie's Pi images.

kiro

@mitu Ah! Good call, thanks for that! I thought it was enabled...my bad. Saved me a lot of headaches there :-)

kiro

Hi @mitu, sorry to bother you...from the samba shares exposed by retropie, there's no way to access the es_systems.cfg, even if read-only, correct? Asking because in order to be sure of which systems the particular retropie setup is running, which extensions are accepted, and which is the path, this file is the only 100% reliable source, as reading the folders in the roms share may not necessarily be correct (folder = system name).

kiro

@mitu Sorry, should've had a better look at the docs:

//RETROPIE/configs/all/emulationstation

Thanks!

mitu

The es_systems.cfg used by default in EmulationStation is located in /etc/emulationstation. The one in \\retropie\configs\all\emulationstation is user-created (overriding the one in /etc/emulationstation) and it's not generally not present in a RetroPie installation. Unless the user creates the override config, it's not there.

You can find the list of default extensions by system in https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/platforms.cfg. This rarely changes and you can use it as a fallback in case the user doesn't have a custom/local es_systems.cfg in the config folder.

kiro

@mitu nice one... My concern is about heavily customized setups (for example mine) where I have one directory per Arcade manufacturer (although they use the same emulator, they have a different theme setup for example), and directories do not necessarily match the system name, but I guess I can consider that as an edge case.

Thanks Again!