Some NES and Genesis games freeze Lakka

Libretro Lakka
#1

This may be due to the particular ROMs I’m using (most work great), but certain ones freeze Lakka with a black screen upon attempting to start emulation, namely Contra (NES) and Altered Beast (Genesis). I can still SSH in to Lakka and issue a reboot command, which takes about 60 seconds before presumably killing the locked core and initiating the reboot (normally it restarts extremely quickly).

My suggestion to prevent this is to figure out a way to check if the running core is “alive” and if not to kill it and return to the main menu. I don’t know if this is possible without a lot of work. Do the cores support a “ping”-like command to report they’re working? If so then the solution would be relatively easy to implement. It could even prompt the user at that point, “Core crashed. Would you like to remove the game from your library?”

#2

Since you are able to ssh into the machine, you should be able to do something like “$> systemctl retroarch restart” instead of rebooting. Also, using the “ps” (process) command should tell you whether a process is running.

#3

I also suspect something else is going on, as faulty ROMs shouldn’t be able to bring the whole system down like that.

#4

Is there a log file somewhere or would dmesg over SSH provide any useful information? I could send you the specific ROMs for testing if you’re a developer (INSTA-BAN!). Point me in a direction and I’ll do it. :slight_smile:

#5

Please follow this documentation :wink:

#6

Do your roms match the checksums from the “no intro” set? Lakka uses the no intro rom database for its rom scanning. “No Intro” has already gone through the trouble of confirming the validity of roms.

The Rom Scanning section of the Lakka Documentation explains is in more detail… http://www.lakka.tv/doc/ROMs-and-BIOSes/

#7

It happened again with a ROM that had worked before on the same Lakka installation, which led me to believe it’s not the hardware, ROMs, or Lakka in general but most likely a particular setting or combination of settings. After some experimentation with the settings it appears that the “Hard GPU Sync” option was causing the issue. Could be a bug that hasn’t been pinpointed yet due to the fact that apparently it only affects certain ROMs, but most work fine. I’m satisfied with the “solution” on my end, but it might be something to keep an eye out for in the event it becomes a bigger problem in the future.