Savestate and savefile oncloud//Nextcloud syncronization

recio.alex

Hi!

I use 3 Retropie machines in different rooms and situations (one Pi on the living room, another on my "home-office", and the laptop when my wife is watching some Tv on the living room) so i have a big problem with the savegames on the different machines.

I have a small server with some services and one of them is nextcloud so, i decided to put a bit of effort to synchronise the savegames over the nextcloud.

So, after some testing i ended up with a script that:
1.- If owncloudCMD is not on the system, it compiles the owncloud-client.
2.- changes the savefile and savestate location to all the cores(If you use the roms directory it will take a long time to sync, even if you exclude everything except the savefiles, the owncloudcmd will check all the files and then determine if is excluded or not and that is a lot of time with 5-6 systems and 500-1000 roms per system)
3.-It will create a runcommand-onend and runcommand-onstart, to sync the saves just before and after a game session, so your saves will be allways up to date.
4.- It will configure a total sync on boot in the /etc/rc.local

The script saves your owncloud username and pasword on plain text on a file located at $HOME/.savesync/saveconfig so i encourage you to use a separated account for the rom sync.

Also the root folder you choose on your nextcloud, MUST be created.

To use the script:

git clone https://github.com/recioalex/savesync.git
cd savesync

./configuresavesync -u username -p password -l /home/pi/RetroPie/saves 
            -o https://my.owncloud.nextcloud.server/remote.php/webdav/Retropie/saves

****  on the Ownlocud server Retropie/saves MUST BE CREATED ****

If you have improvements for the scrip make a pull request on github

This script could be improved to use other cloud solutions, so if someone have interest there is a nice base.

For easy testing, it cold be done only modifying the runcommand to use the synchronisation client of the other cloud solution instead of owncloudcmd.

backstander

@recio.alex
This is a great idea but do you mean Nextcloud with the letter 't' or is Nexcloud something else or another fork of OwnCloud?

recio.alex

I mean NextCloud

Edited first post to correct typos from nexcloud to nextcloud.

Relik

Hi there,

A couple of quick questions if you do not mind:

I created the /home/pi/RetroPie/Saves folder and ran the script. It set up nextcloud and it creates a directory for every system (nes/snes/etc.). I have the /all retroarch.cfg file configured to target the /home/pi/RetroPie/Saves folder for all saves and save states, however games would not save here. I noticed that the folders were owned by 'root' - so I changed that to pi:pi ... I could then see games being saved etc. Should I be modifying the owner here on these folders and do I just place all saves into each respective directory?
When you reference /Retropie/saves at the end of your webdav address for Nextcloud - is that just the nextcloud userid/rootfolder? Say I had a user named Retro and a folder named Saves ... would my addess end in /Retro/Saves?

I can't seem to get it to sync any files up to the server or pull any down for some reason.

This is on a fresh install of Retropie. I should note too that my Nextcloud server is running version 9.0.53 I believe, so I don't know if that is an issue if the fresh install is breaking trying to communicate with an older version on the server?

Thanks! :)

recio.alex

Hi.

Mmmm, in a clean install i didn't change any permissions... anyway, run a:

sudo chown pi <yourSavesDirectory> -R

And all your save game sub directories will become properties of PI.
I will look at the code to make it change the directory permissions.

The address on the nexcloud is

https://.../Retropie/save

So is directory Retropie, sub directory saves.

Your address must be

https://.../save

if you want your saves directory on the root of the owncloud user directory

I have more things on this retropie nextcloud user, so i have a separated directory for the saves inside the Retropie directory.!

If you look at the comands of the script you can sync for example your romsets whit 1 or 2 commands... very handy...

The directory /Retropie/saves on the nextcloud MUST BE CREATED MANUALLY! the rest of directories not, but saves must exist or owncloudcmd will fail to sync with a non existent destination.

Sorry for the late response... i don't look too much at this forum...

The script is tested with nextcloud 11.0.1

Regards!

Relik

@recio.alex

Thank you very much for the reply! I will test this soon. Thanks again!

zerojay

For anyone wanting to attempt this with Stretch, it's actually a lot easier. The owncloud client and command line client are now included in Stretch. Run apt-get install owncloud-client-cmd to install the client this script needs. Then edit the script so that it is checking for owncloudcmd in /usr/bin/owncloudcmd instead of /usr/local/bin/owncloudcmd. Run the edited script through sudo and away you go. Everything works swimmingly aside from the fact that old saves are not moved to the new location.