Clean SD install on pi 4 just dumps me at terminal after the splash screen

chrisdsearle

Specs/details

Pi Model or other hardware: Pi 4b
Power Supply used: Pi's own for Pi 4
RetroPie Version Used: 4.8
Built From: retropie-buster-4.8-rpi4_400.img.gz
USB Devices connected: Two sets of controllers (and for debug - keyboard and mouse)
Controller used: Two USB boards with joysticks and arcade buttons - generics - but they worked fine on the old version (see below)
Guide used: Tried following https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/ - but when it says I should get controller config - I get dumped to the terminal

Description

So - I had an old retropie - over a year old and I haven't used it in that time - but it was running fine. However I wanted a clean new install.

Wish I'd noted the old version but I didn't - my bad - I was impatient.

So - I formatted the SD card clean - downloaded the latest raspberry pi 4 image and on initial boot I'm getting dumped to the terminal after the retropie splash screen.

Have tried building the card several times - using raspberry pi flasher - and it does the same thing each time.

There is exactly one change to the actual config.txt for the pi install - I have to enable one setting because I'm testing using a small portable 10" hdmi screen that works fine with several of my pi 4's but only with that setting.

config_hdmi_boost=4

Running emulationstation by itself at that point just tells me No systems found - and only gives me the "exit" button.

I must be missing something obvious - but this is a clean install of the latest image with nothing else, no changes to any retropie configuration (we don't get that far) - so I'm not sure why it wouldn't at least show me the controller config?

mitu

That's strange, since the image shouldn't behave like that. Are you using PI Imager to write the image (haven't heard of Pi flasher) ? Did you have any customizations from the RPI Imager applied to the image ?

Retrodade

@chrisdsearle said in Clean SD install on pi 4 just dumps me at terminal after the splash screen:

Two USB boards

Two USB boards, new ones? I've gotten new joysticks with encoders and somehow when I used them it would crash pi4, but "emulation station" would crash to a "crash warning box" unless I used a different encoder (older) but i found a fix on YouTube for new encoder boards causing the crash, wouldn't hurt to do it I guess as mine now can use old or new encoder boards. not saying it's your issue but worth a google (mine wouldn't boot after splash it would crash)
you can unplug to controller see if it boots to no controller detected box.

chrisdsearle

@mitu

Sorry - yes - Raspberry Pi Imager

In the custom there I set the following:

Hostname (retropie.local)
Wifi (SSID and password)
SSH (allow SSH)

That's about it.

chrisdsearle

@Retrodade

About 2 years old. But they were still working on the previous SD card build before I wiped the card.

They're ones that look like this:

mitu

Outside a broken SD card I have no idea what could be wrong - since some data is clearly missing on the card.
Run, from the terminal:

cd RetroPie-Setup
sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

and then run an update for RetroPie + OS packages and kernel. Reboot after the updates are finished (assuming it completes and doesn't throw and error) and see if EmulationStation starts automatically this time.

chrisdsearle

@mitu

Was starting to wonder about the card - yes.

I'll give that a try - if not - I'll get a new SD card.

chrisdsearle

OK - that updated a lot of dpkgs as expected.

It then did a lot of git cloning

Now ES says "Two gamepads detected" rather than "no system".

So - I have no idea what was wrong with the image process - but - I seem to be getting further - have to run now - will try and complete config later on today - but thanks for your help :)

mitu

@chrisdsearle said in Clean SD install on pi 4 just dumps me at terminal after the splash screen:

It then did a lot of git cloning

Hm, something's not right - updating shouldn't install things from source, but using pre-compiled binaries, which doesn't do use git except for some minor updates.

EDIT: Can you post the log file from the update - at least the start of it - on pastebin.com ? There should be a log file in $HOME/RetroPie-Setup/tmp.

chrisdsearle

@mitu Will do - but will be later - am not currently home.

However - before I left - I did copy in a quick test - atari 2600 roms and bios.

Seems to run fine.

Will grab the logs later