More then 12 Emulators active

[ceuse]

Edit 08.04
The open Github Issue can be found here -> Click me

Hello Everybody. im experienceing a huge problem with emulationstation / Retropie.

As soon as i add more then 12 Emulators emulationstation Crashes at startup (the Gui only gets shown till half and then it freezes).

I had the problem on Both RPi-B and now RPI-2.

Active Emulators (at the moment) :

Genesis 32x
Snes
Ps1
GBa
Ports
Gb
Gbc
GameGear
TurboGrafx16
Nes
Sega Master System
Sega Genesis

Before i could Add the PS1 i had to remove my N64 from the list.
Before i could Add the N64 a few weeks ago i had to remove my Atari2600

anyone knows / can recreate the Issue? im kinda clueless what happens.

[sselph]

I remember reading in another forum post, there can be issues with the amount of RAM required and the number of emulators ES is loading. There was a recent change to reduce the size of background images to reduce the amount required so you could try upgrading it to see. But you’d expect the problem to get better with the rpi2 since it has more RAM.

sudo ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_packages.sh emulationstation install_bin
sudo ~/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_packages.sh esthemesimple

[ceuse]

yeah i thought that aswell. since i ran into the exect same problem on both the pi B and now the Pi2 (both time on 12 emulators).

so im pretty much ruling out a ram issue

[petrockblog]

did you try increasing the amount of ram allocated to the gpu (by editing /boot/config.txt ?)

[ceuse]

no im still at standart. but can that really be the problem?

as said i had the same problems with the rpi B where mem is set to 256 and now with rpi2 its set to 384 and still the same problem.

also i added n64 again and removed turbograph x16 and its working (even though n64 shows twice now since i have a rom in the n64-rice folder).

I think there might be a hardcap on overall roms/systems (since i have the complete libary on most of my systems).

anyone has an idea how to bugfix / log the issue? as said it freezes directly at startup with half of the gui lodaded

[sselph]

You could see if there is anything in ~/.emulationstation/es_log.txt

[labelwhore]

This happens on my 1080p TV and does not happen on my 720p TV. Allocating more ram to the GPU does the trick, so does forcing the pi to 720p. As you’ve noticed, reducing the number of roms also helps. If you’ve got entire collections of roms, chances are you have hundreds if not thousands of duplicates, reducing those dups will obviously help.

I have all of the emulators working except macintosh, and have even added a few, so you can definately have more than 12 running at once.

[ceuse]

Ok news about this issue :

today i added a gamelist.xml for my kodi roms folder. it worked quite well. After that i noticed that my gb and gbc gamelist.xml were broken. after i reuploaeded those to my pi. the error occured again (white line on top. unresponsive right at startup).

even removing both the gamelist.xml files from gb and gbc wouldt fix the issue. only when i removed the gamelist.xml file for my kodi installation (wich worked prior to the gb and gbc fix) it starts working again

Any ideas how a (even corrupted) xml file can break emulationstation at startup?

I added the xml in question as an attachment since it seems the forum eats my post as soon as i add xml stuff

[ceuse]

bumpedy.. anybody got an idea.. :-(

[ceuse]

just tried to edit a gamelist.xml to add a new game and (almost) had the same error again.

although it only happend after a few browsing, the whole system froze again. not even keyboard input (like f4 etc) would work. after i removed the entry from the gamelist it works again.

something about the gamelist.xml handling seems seriously broken.

[Floob]

Longshot, but the ES gamelists will complain *a lot* if you make ANY change at all whilst ES is running. Make sure all changes are done without ES running.

[ceuse]

well it still happend after multiple reboots though :-( im truely at a loss & have no idea how to narrow / log the issue

[Floob]

Do you get the error if you:
– Create clean 2.6.0 image
– Run it and quit ES
– Manually edit gamelist. Save it
– Restart ES? (By typing “emulationstation” at the command prompt.)

I’ve done that approach and its always been fine.

[ceuse]

well i ran into the same error on both my old rpi b with emulationstation 2.1 i think and now with rpi2 and 2.6 installation with the same amount of roms/gamelist.xmls.. i dont really want to start fresh since its working perfectly as long as i dont add a new gamelist.xml file (or another game to a existing gamelist.xml).

i gotta test it out some more by adding more/diffrent games to my gamelist.xml files..

i just thought of something. could it be a encoding problem since i edit it on notepad++ on windows (i use utf8 without bom)

[ceuse]

bump.. is there anyway to turn on debug mode / collect logs from emulationstation?

[Floob]

[quote=92586]bump.. is there anyway to turn on debug mode / collect logs from emulationstation?[/quote]

The log is
/home/pi/.emulationstation/es_log.txt

[labelwhore]

It’s a video ram issue. Allocate more ram to the gpu.

[labelwhore]

Alternatively reduce the size and or quality of scraped images.

[ceuse]

tried that.

with standart allocation (384) + adding a new gamelist. Error.
Changed allocation to 512 + adding a new (1 Game) gamelist . Same error.

Gonna try to check es_log.txt and then respond
Edit:
ok since the ES Log is almost completly the same (compared working / non working es_log)
Only diffrence (parsing a non existing folder/xml file):

lvl1: 	  Unknown platform for system "kodi" (platform "kodi" from list "kodi")
lvl2: 	Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/kodi/gamelist.xml"...

Changes to (actual location of a existing gamelist.xml file)

lvl1: 	  Unknown platform for system "kodi" (platform "kodi" from list "kodi")
lvl2: 	Parsing XML file "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/kodi/gamelist.xml"...

here some more info / screens on what happens :

before i add a new gamelist.xml everything works fine :

[img]http://i.imgur.com/hUeqJvf.jpg[/img]

after i Add My Kodi Gamelist after i try to enter the emulator :

[img]http://i.imgur.com/xKh6cu9.jpg[/img]

after that it freezes

and heres the es_log if anyone is intrested in the full Log

es_log.txt

and heres the xml i try to add

gamelist.xml

To summarize : I add a new gamelist to emulationstation – everything works fine while i dont enter a System.
After i enter a (random) System this above happens and the system freezes.

[devo]

Hi ceuse

I don’t think your problem has anything to do with your scraped images or gamelists. From looking at your screenshots you appear to be using the Zoid theme. The background images for each emulator in Zoid are scaled to 1080p. Not sure why, but these larger images seem to quickly use up all your VRAM.

The Simple theme which comes as standard with RetroPie has images half this size (720p), and because of this I’m am able to run up to 23 emulators before I start to experience frozen white screens when booting.

I went through all my background images a few weeks ago and halved them again in size to only 640×360. This has allowed me to have even more emulators to choose from on the menu screen without any more freezing problems. I currently have 31 emulators up and running.
Downgrading the backgrounds to an SD resolution has added a little bit of blockiness and jpeg artifacting, but it really doesn’t look as bad as you might think.

I would recommend that you switch back to the Simple theme and then try adding a few more emulators to your list. I believe you should then be able to make it into the early 20’s before you experience any more frozen screens.

Do any of the devs know why these background images cause such a problem? The folder which contains the Simple theme is only around 11MB in size, and quite a bit of what is contained within isn’t even used, such as the original unblurred images and currently unsupported systems. Now that we have the RPi2 with 1GB of RAM, I can’t understand why these larger resolution background images can cause such a drain on resources. Is there any kind of quick fix which could be implemented?

[ceuse]

Ok you are right. If i lower the Resulution of the background images it works fine when i add another gamelist.xml file.

Although adding a new system with more roms breaks the system again in the known too few ram fassion directly at startup.

Still there must be a MAYOR Ram drain if a single gamelist (which shouldt be affecting the overview and should only be read when entering a specific System).
My tests indicates that at the Moment, emulationstation parses every Gamelist.xml file directly at startup and keeps everything in Memory.

[Floob]

I think you’re right about the ES behaviour – although I have about 10 systems setup and must be over 10,000 roms referenced (lots of mame versions) and it seems to cope (Pi2) – so maybe the number of emulators displayed is more of a factor.

[ceuse]

[quote=92818]I think you’re right about the ES behaviour – although I have about 10 systems setup and must be over 10,000 roms referenced (lots of mame versions) and it seems to cope (Pi2) – so maybe the number of emulators displayed is more of a factor.[/quote]
also even with a “broken” emulationstation i still get the same es_log.txt which higly indicates that the complete gamelist.xml files are parsed directly at the startup. Pure Numbers of roms doesnt matter that much, but if you add them to a gamelist.xml file with a picture and description etc then the problem starts

i hope they change that soon / is on the radar since atm i cant add another emulator without breaking my intallation (even with 720p backgrounds)

[paradroyd]

I’m seeing the same problem on 2 Raspberry Pi 2s. The configuration on both is nearly identical because one was imaged from the other, then modified (hostname server ssh keys, etc).

I currently have a 512/512 memory split with the default theme on them. Everything works great as long as I don’t try to have more than 23 emulators active. As soon as I go above that, I get the white screen freeze described above. I can add an emulator as long as I remove one (by swapping out it’s rom folder). It doesn’t seem to matter how many roms any of them have in them, from one to a thousand.

It’s interesting that htop run in another console shows that the cpu cores are mostly idle when the white screen is up.

[ceuse]

[quote=92860] It doesn’t seem to matter how many roms any of them have in them, from one to a thousand.
[/quote]

Try To add some gamelist.xml files with images to your setup and you should see the number decline from 23. Or just remove some if you allready have some scraped.

[paradroyd]

I’ll have to try that. As it is now, I don’t have much scraped at all. If it turns out that that reduces what I can run, I just won’t scrape anything else until this is fixed.

[ceuse]

Sadly i dont got any response on my git issue yet. i hope they will look into this. im hesitant to start again with the new 3.0 image before this behaviour is officially resolved since it really kills the fun if your bound to a specific number of system / roms

[pfunk237]

Yup, i had that problem with 12 emulators B+, and now with 23 Emulators Pi2.

[petrockblog]

You could report the problem upstream to emulationstation perhaps ? Maybe there is something that could be improved in the es code to reduce memory usage etc.

[d8thstar]

yikes, running into lock ups myself as i added more emu’s over the weekend. running 25 and some white box art is starting to show up with garbled text.

i’ll try taking that down to 20 to see if it still does the same thing.

[ceuse]

[quote=94143]You could report the problem upstream to emulationstation perhaps ? Maybe there is something that could be improved in the es code to reduce memory usage etc.[/quote]

How would i do that other then by opening my git issue ? (https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/423)

[quote=94158]yikes, running into lock ups myself as i added more emu’s over the weekend. running 25 and some white box art is starting to show up with garbled text.

i’ll try taking that down to 20 to see if it still does the same thing.
[/quote]
or just remove some gamelist xmls if you have them scraped and see if that fixes the issue (at least for me it does)

[petrockblog]

ceuse – it’s not completely clear from that issue title etc that it is the same problem, but yeh you have already reported it. Hopefully Aloshi will have more time for emulationstation soon.

it’s also possible the gameslistdb branch will help with this (or not).

[ceuse]

[quote=94192]ceuse – it’s not completely clear from that issue title etc that it is the same problem, but yeh you have already reported it. Hopefully Aloshi will have more time for emulationstation soon.

it’s also possible the gameslistdb branch will help with this (or not).
[/quote]

I Knew more about the issue when i opend the Git Issue. I think/hope it is more clear on the actualy problem there.
Sadly im not savy enough with Linux to actually collector more Information other then the es_debug log beeing the same when its working or freezing.

i edited the inital post to include the git link so its easier to find

[d8thstar]

[quote=94190]

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>buzz wrote:</div>
You could report the problem upstream to emulationstation perhaps ? Maybe there is something that could be improved in the es code to reduce memory usage etc.

How would i do that other then by opening my git issue ? (https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/423)

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>d8thstar wrote:</div>
yikes, running into lock ups myself as i added more emu’s over the weekend. running 25 and some white box art is starting to show up with garbled text.

i’ll try taking that down to 20 to see if it still does the same thing.

or just remove some gamelist xmls if you have them scraped and see if that fixes the issue (at least for me it does)
[/quote]

thanks for the suggestion, I will give it a try. I want to be sure I am removing the correct xmls, would you mind sharing what folder they are hiding in? fyi, I am running the newest 3.0 beta.

thanks so much!

[Floob]

Default gamelists are sent here:
/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/{systemname}

If you dont use ES to scrape, the gamelists will often be in the rom dir.

[Author]

Posts