[thehoff]

It took a while, but I’ve found an acceptable solution. The program script allows me to circumvent the non-existing tty problem. crontab now contains the following line:
@reboot script -c "bash /home/pi/startup_script.sh > /home/pi/media_output.log 2>&1"

startup_script.sh is a script that frequently polls whether my TV is on or not and checks a file for what program it should start when this is the case (currently limited to Kodi and Retropie).

Thanks for your help!

[thehoff]

It does indeed seem to have something to do with not being attached to a TTY. I added the following line to crontab:

@reboot bash /home/pi/emulation.sh > /home/pi/output.log 2>&1

When I try to enter a game in psx in emulationstation I get the following output in output.log:

TERM environment variable not set.
Press a key (or joypad button 0) to configure launch options for emulator/port (lr-pcsx-rearmed). Errors will be logged to /tmp/runcommand.log
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh: line 667: /dev/tty: No such device or address
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh: line 696: /dev/tty: No such device or address
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/joy2key.py", line 43, in <module>
    tty_fd = open("/dev/tty", "w")
IOError: [Errno 6] No such device or address: '/dev/tty'

Now, I do not know how to attach this process to a tty. Could you supply me with the correct commands? In crontab I tried:
@reboot bash /home/pi/emulation.sh < /dev/tty > /dev/tty
@reboot bash /home/pi/emulation.sh > /dev/tty
@reboot bash /home/pi/emulation.sh > /dev/tty0

[thehoff]

I’ve tried out a few more ways to start emulationstation. All commands are ran as user ‘pi’. I hope this gives you some more clarity:
start emulationstation locally from the commandline: Works fine. An empty runcommand.log is created at /tmp/. This is the only way I’ve seen a logfile being created.

Start emulationstation through SSH from my PC: Works fine.

Start emulationstation through SSH from a script using either bash or sh: Seems to work fine now, not sure if this was the case before.

Use Crontab to start emulationstation at boot: Black screen for few seconds, then returns to home menu.

Use Crontab to start a script to start emulationstation: Black screen for few seconds, then returns to home menu.

Use Crontab to start a script that sleeps for 60 seconds and then starts emulationstation: Black screen for few seconds, then returns to home menu.

Use add-on “Advanced Launcher” within Kodi to start emulationstation: Black screen for few seconds, then returns to home menu. Please note that this is the way I intent to start emulationstation. But any work-around would also be appreciated.

[thehoff]

I don’t think the problem is related to the missing ‘/’. Emulationstation does start, so the script is executed properly. Furthermore, /usr/bin/emulationstation was part of a more complex script which did include the missing ‘/’ at the beginning of the script. I’ve also tried running it as both user ‘pi’ and as root.

Launching the script with bash instead of sh (and changing /bin/sh to bin/bash) did not make any difference. Emulationstation would launch properly, but the emulator would not.

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