$dispmanx_conf is ignored on some systems

[mruwek]

I've installed RetroPie via binary installation on OSMC with help of mcobit/retrosmc script. Everything works well so far except for emulators/ports that need dispmanx despite having it properly configured in $configdir/all/dispmanx.cfg.

My example is OpenTyrian Running it from EmulationStation always ends with such entry in /tmp/runcommand.log:

failed to initialize any supported video

1. I've read in discussion under #1050 that this is caused by unset dispmanx flag.
2. I double-checked file permissions of $configdir/all/dispmanx.cfg and its contents. File permissions were fine, and dispmanx.cfg had line:

opentyrian="1"

3. I've also added to runcommand.sh tiny debug-purpose line echo $save_emu > /tmp/save_emu right after calling get_save_vars. Resulting file after starting the game from ES was blank.
4. Then I tried also to comment out line 91 and after that OpenTyrian worked flawlessly and /tmp/save_emu had one line with 'opentyrian` in it.

It seems then that the problem lies in this particular substitution:

save_emu=${save_emu//[^a-Z0-9_\-]/}

Right now I don't have any idea why this substitution doesn't work. Maybe it's related with some bash-4.3 (this is the bash version on OSMC) changes? I believe on Raspbian Wheezy there is still bash-4.2. Could be anything else of course - I'm not a Bash-related expert :)

Sidenote:

Before installation of OpenTyrian I had to:

• install mercurial via apt-get install mercurial. retropie_setup.sh didn't succeed with that for some reason.
• install unzip via apt-get install unzip - default version of unzip on OSMC doesn't have option -j used by retropie_setup.sh during extraction of tyrian21.zip.

[joolswills]

Ignore the reference to dispmanx flag in that discussion. Opentyrian works with and without the dispmanx sdl backend. It should be faster without.

I suspect your problems might be related to the way retrosmc installs everything. Have you asked on the OSMC thread about this ? I cannot really advise on 3rd party implementations (I'm not sure if retrosmc is still using a chroot method of installation or not)

save_emu must be working as it affects the dispmanx setting and is making a difference. I think it's an issue with sdl - Your error actually sounds like either you dont have our sdl installed, or something else.

I recommend you try running it manually from terminal

standard sdl framebuffer output:
/opt/retropie/ports/opentyrian/bin/opentyrian --data ~/RetroPie/roms/ports/opentyrian/data/
force dispmanx sdl1 backend:
SDL1_VIDEODRIVER="dispmanx"  /opt/retropie/ports/opentyrian/bin/opentyrian --data ~/RetroPie/roms/ports/opentyrian/data/

Regarding other problems - Are you using busybox or something ? which unzip was being used before ? I can only think you are using some shell with unzip built in by default ? I will add unzip as a dependency though. Can't help with the installation problem of mercurial without logs.

I would add that OSMC support is still to be considered WIP, and I have only tested myself installing retropie modules directly without any additional helper scripts like retrosmc.

[mruwek]

I cannot really advise on 3rd party implementations

Sure thing. Consider this issue report as a try to help with providing better support for OSMC :) I know very well that for now I'm on my own.

I'm not sure if retrosmc is still using a chroot method of installation or not

Latest version isn't using chroot. (alpha 0.007) and it's using retropie_setup.sh to install everything.

save_emu must be working (...)

It's working (i.e. non-empty) only when I delete or comment out line mentioned above. Look at my debug approach - blank $save_emu with this line enabled and opentyrian with this line commented out. Furthermore - game starts right after commenting this line ($save_emu is then successfully set to opentyrian). Even more furthermore - with this line enabled I had problems in emulator/rom config menu (accessed with button0 right after start) - trying to set default video/framebuffer also ended with errors. And again no problems after commenting out. Seriously - it's something with bash-4.3 or the way that bash is called from RetroPie on OSMC.

I don't understand why it fails, because this line is in my opinion completely sane, but it fails nonetheless when called from RetroPie. I can post a screencast if you want me to prove it :)

Are you using busybox or something ? which unzip was being used before ?

Yep, OSMC uses busybox and Dash AFAIK. Which can be an answer to problem above. As we read in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh:

${parm/?/pat[/str]}

The '${parm/?/pat[/str]}' warning from the checkbashisms script.

This is a parameter expansion ${parameter/pattern/string} supported in bash but not in dash. To replace these, you could make use of echo, sed, grep, and/or awk among other tools. For example.

I'll try to implement this line with sed or awk and see what happens then.

[mruwek]

I will add unzip as a dependency

Great :)

Can't help with the installation problem of mercurial without logs.

I'll try to collect them and post them here.

[joolswills]

RetroPie is all bash based and expects bash to be installed. When I was testing on OSMC it wasn't using busybox/dash so has that changed or I was using another version. Is bash installed or does "bash" launch busybox or dash ?

[joolswills]

I wont be interested in removing bashisms - we are specifically using bash features etc.

[mruwek]

Bash (4.3) is definitely installed and as I wrote previously - testing get_save_vars (copying it to another file,sh and hardcoding $emulator) on the same machine (via ssh) worked well.

[joolswills]

Somehow runcommand is being launched without bash then ? What does "echo $0" show if you stick it at the top of the script ?

[mruwek]

Looks like problem exists only when runcommand.sh is called from within EmulationStation.

[joolswills]

If you can work out why it's happening that would help. I can't really advise without being able to reproduce the problem myself - which I can try when I have some free time to test again on OSMC. Also you might want to launch ES manually from terminal via /opt/retropie/supplementary/emulationstation/emulationstation to rule out anything related to the way ES is launched from within Kodi or via another script (I know retrosmc has it's own launch scripts etc)

[mruwek]

When I was testing on OSMC it wasn't using buybox so has that changed or I was using another version.

I'm quite sure dash is the default system shell, but for interactive login shells (ssh) it could be bash (that would explain why get_save_vars works properly via ssh). I'm also really sure now that unzip shipped with OSMC is a busybox implementation.

If you can work out why it's happening that would help

As soon as I'll be back home I'll try to test echo $0.

[joolswills]

BTW just as some additional info - it does work without dispmanx - just make sure you have a framebuffer mode configured for the output res. eg 640x400 (default when using x2 scale - scaling can be switched off for possibly better performance). It works here, so perhaps OSMC doesn't have as many default framebuffer modes configured too.

[joolswills]

Also you can add

echo $BASH_VERSION

I would like to know if exiting kodi to a terminal and manually launching ES works as mentioned above (not via retrosmc /usr/bin/emulationstation script).

[mruwek]

Ok. Some good news and bad news.

1. Starting ES from ssh via retrosmc script: ./RetroPie/scripts/retopie.sh works.
2. Starting via retrosmc Kodi launcher addon doesn't.

It's strange as this launcher does nothing more than:

output=os.popen("/bin/bash/home/osmc/RetroPie/scripts/retropie.sh").read()

So this is almost surely not a RetroPie bug, nor bash version problem, nor retrosmc bug. Probably problem with some env var passed by Kodi addons framework and messing up some bashisms in result.

[joolswills]

http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2011/04/how-use-bash-shell-python-subprocess-instead-binsh/

has the solution possibly.

[mruwek]

has the solution possibly.

I've tried that before with no result

[mruwek]

Later today I'll post one small gist (test script containing get_save_vars function outputting $save_emu to tmpfile) that can be set in place of /home/osmc/RetroPie/script/retropie.sh) that can help to easily reproduce this bug without installation of OpenTyrian. I have also nearly completely excluded theory that runcommand.sh is run by other interpreter than Bash. I have two reasons for this:

1. There is another substring substitution in the get_save_vars at line 90: save_emu=${emulator//\//_}. If whole script would be run by Dash, this line would also not work.
2. I tried to run get_save_vars function explicitly with Dash and it failed then with Bad substitution error. No such error when trying to run OpenTyrian from ES.

I'll also post an issue report at retrosmc tracker so @mcobit can share his thoughts.

[mruwek]

Ok, found it. It's related with collate shell env-variable, but there is one simple change that makes the whole line totally immune to the environment it is run in. I'll provide PR in a moment.

[joolswills]

aah so we can do A-Za-z instead and it will resolve it right ?

[joolswills]

nice one btw :-)

[mruwek]

aah so we can do A-Za-z instead and it will resolve it right ?

Right :)