Emulationstation losing focus on start up

vermilionwizard

Hey, I'm not sure what changed, but recently my x86 retropie is booting up and the terminal window is stealing focus away from Emulationstation. This is super annoying because I have to pull out a keyboard to get back to emulationstation. The terminal window is showing this message:

Couldn't open plugin directory: No such file or directory
No plugins found, falling back on no decorations

Pi Model or other hardware: x86 PC
RetroPie Version Used: 4.8.3
Built From: Ubuntu 22.04, all packages up to date as of this morning.
USB Devices connected: wireless keyboard dongle
Controller used: SN30pro+
Error messages received: Couldn't open plugins directory

es_log.txt: https://pastebin.com/UECx5KT7
es_settings.cfg: https://pastebin.com/XRy0KYYa

Not sure what else to look at here. Any suggestions?

mitu

It may be caused by a recent change in the EmulationStation startup script. Can you open /usr/bin/emulationstation and comment out the line:

[[ "\$WAYLAND_DISPLAY" == wayland* ]] && export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland

and see if the error still shows up ?

EDIT: as an alternative, log off from the current desktop session and then log on using the 'Ubuntu on Xorg' session type. Check if starting EmulationStation has the same issue.

vermilionwizard

@mitu Yep, commenting out that line seems to have fixed it.

What's the forward approach here? Will I have to do that again next time emulationstation gets an update, or is there a fix yet to be released for this?

mitu

@vermilionwizard You can use the Gnome/Ubunto on Xorg session instead of the default (which uses Wayland) and you'll not have this issue.

However, I can't seem to reproduce this on my 22.04 installation so I was wondering why does it only happen in your setup. Is this a normal/default Ubuntu deskop install ? Was is upgraded from a previous version is a new installation ?
Can you get the list of packages installed and post it on pastebin.com ? Run

dpkg -l > packages.txt

and post the contents of packages.txt on pastebin.com.

vermilionwizard

@mitu Here's the pastebin for the dpkg list: https://pastebin.com/hqp8k2db

I'm pretty sure this machine was originally setup as a 20.04 installation and upgraded to 22.04 sometime last year. It's been turned off for a while and I just recently brushed the dust off, and of course there were a bunch of upgrades waiting. But that also makes it hard to pinpoint a specific change that led to this issue.

mitu

My test Ubuntu 22.04 system was also upgrade. Since 22.04 sets Wayland as default display server, you may be missing some libraries needed for CSD. Try installing the libdecor-0-plugin-1-cairo package and see if - when using Wayland - you get the same error when starting a SDL2 application (i.e. EmulationStation or gnome-terminal).