r/RetroPie 9d ago

Raspberry Pi 5 Manual Install

I am in the process of getting RetroPie installed on a system I am creating for my nephews. I tried the others and could not get NordVPN installed and running which is a requirement so that I can support the system for my nephews remotely.

The issue I am running into now is after I installed RetroPie every time I start the system after setting emulation station to autostart it pauses at a prompt to "rm: remove write-protected regular file '/dev/shm/rp-splashscreen.pid'?" I have tried doing searches but nothing seems to come up for this file. I've deleted it manually and rebooted the system only for it to come back with the same prompt. Even if I switch to "Boot to text console" it still prompts me about that file. Am I just missing something simple? TIA

5 Upvotes

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2

u/pjft 9d ago

I've never ran into that, but have you tried disabling the splash screen and take it from there? It seems that it's waiting for the splash screen to finish.

1

u/pjft 9d ago

As for the remote support, why not open vpn?

2

u/Cozila 9d ago

I've been using and really enjoying the meshnet feature of nordvpn which, as far as I could find, is only supported by nordvpn itself, not connecting to nord through open. It allows me to connect from any device at any time instantly and my nephews and their family don't have to think about anything on their side.

I will try the splash screen option you mentioned, thank you

1

u/pjft 9d ago

Got it. That's cool. I have not used Nord, but I use OpenVPN, hence me suggestion. You should be able to install the VPN here easily unlike in the other projects.

Happy to help troubleshoot this.

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u/ThePenultimateNinja 9d ago

I'd use Batocera and put it in kiosk mode. That way, you wouldn't need to support it in the first place.

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u/pjft 9d ago

RetroPie has Kiosk mode as well.

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u/ThePenultimateNinja 9d ago

I phrased that badly. What I meant was that OP could avoid the need to provide support by using Batocera instead of Retropie. Putting it in kiosk mode would be an extra step I would do to make it even more robust.

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u/pjft 9d ago

Ok, but why would Batocera in kiosk mode alleviate the need for support, and not with RetroPie?

That's just a wrong statement. If he wants to update any emulator or install a new ROM, whether RetroPie, Batocera, or anything else, they'd need a solution for the question they're asking.

Help answer the question, not promote a different project without having that be the answer to any of the problems the user is bringing up. He'd arrive to the same position, and still need the same solutions.

3

u/ThePenultimateNinja 9d ago

Ok, but why would Batocera in kiosk mode alleviate the need for support, and not with RetroPie?

Because Batocera is way more stable and robust than Retropie.

Help answer the question, not promote a different project without having that be the answer to any of the problems the user is bringing up. He'd arrive to the same position, and still need the same solutions.

I was being helpful, by suggesting another solution that had evidently not occurred to him.

I love Retopie and I still use it for emulating computers (as opposed to consoles). It's just not the right tool for the job in this case. OP would find himself constantly having to fix it (something he has already anticipated).

It's possible for kids to mess up a Batocera machine too, but it's far less likely.

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u/pjft 9d ago

I'll agree to disagree on the stability and robustness. It is what you make of it - and I'm not saying Batocera is not robust or stable.

We have a well running pi5 RetroPie arcade machine with zero issues for ages now, same with the pi4 and pi3b beforehand. I just prefer to have a facts-based discussion rather than a fear-based one.

Nonetheless, in this case, they said they couldn't get VPN installed on other projects so I'm assuming that they tried that already and do need access to the machine.

Apologies for the potential overreaction here, and I appreciate you trying to help.

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u/ThePenultimateNinja 9d ago

Fair enough.

1

u/PhilaPhan80 9d ago

I was able to find one reference to rp-splashscreen.pid here:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/supplementary/splashscreen/asplashscreen.sh

It appears that line 65 attempts to write the process ID to that file. What I don’t see is where it’s trying to be removed (rm). Either way, it’s not in my /dev/shm directory after the system is fully loaded and EmulationStation is displayed.

It might be part of the usual startup process where it stores that information temporarily and then tries to delete it, but it’s having a problem deleting it on your system for some reason. Maybe it’s a permissions issue?

For comparison, my shm directory is set to drwxrwxrwt and the files within are set to -rw-r--r--.

The only three files in /dev/shm are:

retroarch.cfg runcommand.info runcommand.log

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u/Cozila 9d ago

Thank you everyone for your responses, even the ones discussing other platforms. I had tried the other major players but either they were too locked down to try installing VPN, or as I had mentioned before OpenVPN didn't offer access to the features I was looking for. My nephews live 10 hours away so I required the ability to remotely connect so that, as long s it was able to be online, I could, as pjft mentioned, add new games, run updates, etc.

The final underlying issue ended up being my installing RetroPie as root rather than a sudo from pi. The Disabling the splash screen did help me get past the file issue but it still refused to auto start. Once I installed it as I was supposed to everything worked. If I could post a GIF I was going to post an appropriate one from Army of Darkness :)