Noninteractive installation/upgrades?

[nschloe]

I have a nightly cron job running that updates all my base system packages. I would like to do the same thing with the RetroPie packages. Right now, I don't see a way to that noninteractively though – you always have to launch the retropie_setup.sh and click your way through.

Likewise, I'd like to codify my RetroPie installation in an Ansible script, for which I need one or more noninteractive commands to install RetroPie.

Any hints here?

[AlexMurphy]

@nschloe I would definitely say this is possible, depending of course on your skills. The retropie_setup.sh script really just launches the GUI, if you are doing it automatically this is not needed. Have a look in /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup the have a look in the scriptmodules and tools directories. Everything you need is in there, I think.
If you do this post it here, I and many others would definitely be interested in automating updates using a cron job or single command / script. I'd give it a go myself but I'm not much of a coder. The furthest I have gotten is launching the setup script form a command line menu I made by entering a number choice... saves me a few clicks at least.

[BuZz]

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh

everything that can be done through the GUI in regards to installing etc can be done from commandline.

A default image is set up like this - see scriptmodules/admin/image.sh - a few adjustments are made to the filesystem - hostname / cmdline.txt and then the following is done to install:

#!/bin/bash
cd
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install git dialog xmlstarlet joystick
git clone https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git
modules=(
    'raspbiantools apt_upgrade'
    'setup basic_install'
    'bluetooth depends'
    'raspbiantools enable_modules'
    'autostart enable'
    'usbromservice'
    'usbromservice enable'
    'samba depends'
    'samba install_shares'
    'splashscreen default'
    'splashscreen enable'
    'bashwelcometweak'
    'xpad'
)
for module in "${modules[@]}"; do
    sudo __nodialog=1 ./retropie_packages.sh $module
done

[nschloe]

Thanks @BuZz, I can definitely use that for provisioning.

Any hint on how to do upgrades with RetroPie?

[BuZz]

@nschloe check retropie packages output / setup module functions.

[nschloe]

The only thing I've found so far is

sudo ./retropie_packages.sh setup post_update update_packages_gui_setup update

which does do an update, but is still interactive (Are you sure you want to update installed packages?).

[franklesniak]

@nschloe I've been working on this as well, trying to build a script to automatically update my RetroPie, and I came across your post. I have the following script but still cannot get around the prompts:

cd
cd RetroPie-Setup/
git pull
chmod +x retropie_setup.sh
chmod +x retropie_packages.sh
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade
printf 'o\ny\no\n' | sudo ./retropie_packages.sh setup post_update update_packages_gui_setup update
sudo shutdown -r -t 0

[BuZz]

@franklesniak You have posted on 2 threads and opened an issue on the issue tracker. This is not the way to get my help - I have replied on the issue tracker with the answer, but please follow the guidance provided when asking questions.

# do not run this often as it will put strain on our server - weekly should be enough
cd ~/RetroPie-Setup/
git pull
sudo __nodialog=1 ./retropie_packages.sh setup post_update
sudo __nodialog=1 ./retropie_packages.sh setup update_packages 
sudo __nodialog=1 ./retropie_packages.sh raspbiantools apt_upgrade

[franklesniak]

@buzz thank you very much for the help! Quick question --

It seemed like the RetroPie setup script runs apt-get update and apt-get -y dist-upgrade before calling post_update and update_packages. Do I have that right? If so, should the order of the commands be?:

# do not run this often as it will put strain on our server - weekly should be enough
cd ~/RetroPie-Setup/
git pull
sudo __nodialog=1 ./retropie_packages.sh raspbiantools apt_upgrade
sudo __nodialog=1 ./retropie_packages.sh setup post_update
sudo __nodialog=1 ./retropie_packages.sh setup update_packages 

Also, is there anything special about the raspbiantools apt_upgrade function(s) vs. just running?:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade

Just trying to figure out what is best before calling this "done". Thanks again!