Installation of RetroPie on Raspbian fails: es_system.cfg stays empty.

[tarator]

Hi, I had RetroPie running on my Raspberry Pi 2 and everything worked fine, until I tried to update my retro pie installation using the RetroPie-Setup Script.

This is my system, cat /etc/*release* gives me:

PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="8"
VERSION="8 (jessie)"
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian

I tried to uninstall and then reinstall retropie with sudo ./retropie_setup.sh. I’m using the latest version of the git repository (Version 4.0.6 2477bdb)

This is the error I get, when trying to install (see last few lines of the snippet):

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Installing 'retropiemenu' : RetroPie configuration menu for EmulationStation
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/gamelist.xml“ -> „/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/retropie/gamelist.xml“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/audiosettings.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/audiosettings.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/bluetooth.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/bluetooth.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/configedit.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/configedit.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/esthemes.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/esthemes.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/filemanager.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/filemanager.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/raspiconfig.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/raspiconfig.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/retroarch.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/retroarch.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/retronetplay.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/retronetplay.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/rpsetup.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/rpsetup.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/runcommand.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/runcommand.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/showip.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/showip.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/splashscreen.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/splashscreen.png“
„/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/retropiemenu/icons/wifi.png“ -> „/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons/wifi.png“
/home/pi/git/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/helpers.sh: Zeile 795:  3369 Speicherzugriffsfehler  xmlstarlet sel -D -I -t -m "/" -e "systemList" -m "//system" -s A:T:U "$1" -c "." "/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg.bak" > "/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg"
Unable to install binary for retropiemenu

Somehow the install-script can’t create the file /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg … it stays empty …

xmlstarlet --version gives me:

compiled against libxml2 2.9.1, linked with 20901
compiled against libxslt 1.1.28, linked with 10128

So emulationstation won’t start complaining, that there’s no configuration.

Any suggestions?

[tarator]

Commenting the following lines out brings me one step further. The configuration file is now created. But emulationstation quits with a Segmentation fault now. I guess the problem is somewhere else not with the setup-script. I will dig further after I get some sleep.

Here the corresponding snippet in the file /RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/helpers.sh and the lines I commented-out.

## @fn sortESSystems()
## @param field field to sort by (eg name / platform etc)
## @brief Sorts `/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg` system list by specified field.
function sortESSystems() {
    local field="$1"
    cp "/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg" "/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg.bak"
#    xmlstarlet sel -D -I \
#        -t -m "/" -e "systemList" \
#        -m "//system" -s A:T:U "$1" -c "." \
#        "/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg.bak" >"/etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg"
}

[tarator]

After some hours of sleep, I tried to reinstall RetroPie again.
During the installation progress I get the following error:

debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (Illegal declaration of subroutine Hash::Util::unlock at /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/perl/5.20/Hash/Util.pm line 79.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl/5.20/fields.pm line 122.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Log.pm line 10.
Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 4.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 4.
) -- aborting
0 aktualisiert, 44 neu installiert, 0 zu entfernen und 0 nicht aktualisiert.

So Perl might not be installed correctly… Will try to reinstall perl with sudo apt-get install --reinstall perl

[tarator]

I’m not sure why my perl installation got broken, but I was not able to fix it. I ended up with a fresh Raspbian installation. Now everything works fine egain.