RetroPie – Running games directly via network tutorial

[gabreek]

Hello, i made a script to load games directly via smb share… i’ts not perfect but is the best way i found to make it work… here’s the video:

And here’s the tutorial:

– First of all, MOVE all folders (except the ports) on roms folders of your pi to your pc, then share this folder (ex: \\192.168.1.37\roms)

– In PI go to terminal (alt-f4) or do it via ssh, navigate to /home/pi/ and create a new rom folder using the command “sudo mkdir roms”

– Navigate to /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports and type “sudo nano loadroms.sh, a file editor will open, then you gonna create your file to load roms from your shared folder, your loadroms.sh should be like this (you don’t need to add the # lines)

#Mount the shared folder into /home/pi/roms (replace xxx with your shared user)
sudo mount -t cifs -o user=xxx,password=xxx //your_server_ip/Roms /home/pi/roms
#Create symbolic links of each folder that you have roms to the correct path
sudo ln -s /home/pi/roms/psx /home/pi/RetroPie/roms
sudo ln -s /home/pi/roms/gba /home/pi/RetroPie/roms
sudo ln -s /home/pi/roms/snes /home/pi/RetroPie/roms
#Kill the emulationstation process
ps -ef | grep “emulationstation” | awk ‘{print $2}’ | xargs kill
#Start a new emulationstation process
emulationstation
# END

– Why do i mount roms folder into /home/pi and create symbolic links of the emulator roms folder instead mounting the entire rom folder into the correct path? Because if i replace the entire original roms folder with the mounted one, emulation station will bug A LOT, so you need to create a symbolic link to EVERY folder that contain roms, just add one line and replace the emulator folder (EX: “sudo ln -s /home/pi/roms/mame /home/pi/RetroPie/roms” for mame roms)

– Now that you have create your loadroms.sh file, press CRTL+X, then Y and Enter to save file

– You need to create a file to umount and delete the links when you done playing (yes it’s necessary), in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports folder type “sudo nano unmount.sh” and hit enter, edit your file to be like this:

#START
sudo rm /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/psx
sudo rm /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gba
sudo rm /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes
sudo umount /home/pi/roms
ps -ef | grep “emulationstation” | awk ‘{print $2}’ | xargs kill
emulationstation
#END

– Remember to add one line with every folder that you created symbolic links (EX: sudo rm /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes), press CRTL+X, then Y and Enter to save file.

– Return to emulationstation and test if its working !
Remember: you’ll need to change your default save and savestate folder

Sorry for my bad english, i don’t know much how to use linux, probably there’s a better way to do it (already tried fstab) so, if anyone have an idea or a better way to make it work i’ll apreciate… I think the retropie project could add this feature

[tank]

wow, that seems complicated ;)

i just use fstab
//srv01.home.int/romsretropie /home/pi/RetroPie/roms cifs user=rpi,password=****,domain=home.int,uid=1000,gid=1000,rw 0 0
//srv01.home.int/biosretropie /home/pi/RetroPie/BIOS cifs user=rpi,password=****,domain=home.int,uid=1000,gid=1000,rw 0 0

uid/gid = 1000 means the folders are mounted as user ‘pi’ so making/writing/changing savegames is possible

[jonv]

similar to the above but set extraction_directory = /tmp in retroarch.cfg and left the share read-only

[Author]

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