EmulationStation hangs during boot with ckau-book enabled

[alephnaught0]

So, out of the blue EmulationStation has just started refusing to boot with this theme (my favourite by far, love your work) enabled. Which seems very strange.

I’m running 36 stable on a Pi4. I’ve been using the theme for aaages with no issues whatsoever. Yesterday I was doing a bit of tinkering with control schemes for various platforms, a little scraping, nothing especially dramatic. Haven’t updated Batocera recently, or changed or updated themes. Last thing I did before things broke was toggle MAME off in the “displayed systems” menu.

Then all of a sudden, it won’t boot. I get the ES loading screen going through all my systems, then it gets to “Collections” with a full loading bar, and just hangs there.

I tried reversing every change I had made that day, one at a time, to no avail whatsoever. I started trying other things in desperation, and eventually tracked the problem down. If I switch to another theme, it boots just fine. Literally any other theme. Except ckau-book. Even if I delete and re-install it (which I have a few times now), it still hangs on boot.

Which is.. like I say.. super weird! I don’t much want to switch themes. I’ve tried clearing caches, toggling various frontend options on and off, no joy. Nor do the EmulationStation logs show any errors or warnings of note.

Hugely appreciate any ideas you may have for things to try. No idea whether this is a Batocera issue or a ckau-book one but would be good to find out!

[alephnaught0]

Ah! There are errors, I was looking in the wrong log file. es_log.txt shows the following:

2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "${screen.ratio} == '16/9'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'screen.ratio'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "${screen.ratio} == '4/3'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'screen.ratio'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "${screen.ratio} == '16/10'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'screen.ratio'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "${screen.ratio} == '5/3'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'screen.ratio'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "${screen.ratio} == '3/2'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'screen.ratio'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "${screen.ratio} == '5/4'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'screen.ratio'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players' || {system.theme} == 'gbc' || {system.theme} == 'gbc2players' || {system.theme} == 'gba' || {system.theme} =>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == '3do' || {system.theme} == 'sfc' || {system.theme} == 'satellaview'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'snes' || {system.theme} == 'snesh' || {system.theme} == 'n64' || {system.theme} == 'gameandwatch' || {system.theme} == 'virtualboy' || {system.the>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'supervision'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'supervision'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'supervision'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'supervision'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players' || {system.theme} == 'gbc' || {system.theme} == 'gbc2players' || {system.theme} == 'gba' || {system.theme} =>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == '3do' || {system.theme} == 'sfc' || {system.theme} == 'satellaview'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'snes' || {system.theme} == 'snesh' || {system.theme} == 'n64' || {system.theme} == 'gameandwatch' || {system.theme} == 'virtualboy' || {system.the>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == '3do' || {system.theme} == 'sfc' || {system.theme} == 'satellaview'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'snes' || {system.theme} == 'snesh' || {system.theme} == 'n64' || {system.theme} == 'gameandwatch' || {system.theme} == 'scv' || {system.theme} == >
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'virtualboy' || {system.theme} == 'gx4000' || {system.theme} == 'supergrafx'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == '3do' || {system.theme} == 'sfc' || {system.theme} == 'satellaview'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'snes' || {system.theme} == 'snesh' || {system.theme} == 'n64' || {system.theme} == 'gameandwatch'   || {system.theme} == 'scv' || {system.theme} =>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players' || {system.theme} == 'gbc' || {system.theme} == 'gbc2players' || {system.theme} == 'gba' || {system.theme} =>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'virtualboy' || {system.theme} == 'gx4000' || {system.theme} == 'supergrafx'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players' || {system.theme} == 'gbc' || {system.theme} == 'gbc2players' || {system.theme} == 'gba' || {system.theme} =>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players' || {system.theme} == 'gbc' || {system.theme} == 'gbc2players' || {system.theme} == 'gba' || {system.theme} =>
2023-04-21 23:07:24     ERROR   if "{system.theme} == 'gb' || {system.theme} == 'gb2players' || {system.theme} == 'gbc' || {system.theme} == 'gbc2players' || {system.theme} == 'gba' || {system.theme} =>
<pergrafx'" expression is invalid : Unable to find the variable 'system.theme'.

[alephnaught0]

Issue resolved - switching off ROM checking (using gamelists only) fixed it. I'm not sure why so might still be worthy of investigation on your end but otherwise, all is right with the world again.