Hope you can see what I see. The terminal is in the upper left and of course, Zelda.
Captures are too small.
I can see enough to know that it’s not running via KMS, since it’s showing the desktop environment. You should be running from the console with no desktop environment loaded.
From the desktop, hit ctrl+alt+F1 and that should drop you back to an X-less console where you’ll be asked to login again. Once you’re logged in, run retroarch from the console there and it should load up fullscreen just like Lakka.
OK let me do that when I get off work.
Got it to go without the desktop. Straight away too! It did look exactly like lakka. Let me upload the pics.
ok, so it’s probably the kernel and/or mesa version used by lakka. Dunno how to test such a thing, since it’s a real pain in the butt to compile things for OpenElec.
Oh well. At least I tried everything to isolate the problem and know it’s not me and learned quite a bit in the process.
Yeah, and you learned that it runs fine via KMS in Ubuntu, so you could turn it into your own lakka, basically, using the PPA for nightly updates, even.
Do you mean I could boot Ubuntu into Retroarch straight away without the desktop environment and turn it into essentially a Lakka box?
Yes sir 
And you know I’m going to want this, right? 
I have made some instructions for turning an Ubuntu 16.10 installation into my own “Lakka”. I currently need it for my Apollo Lake based box, as it won’t run with the older kernel used in Lakka. The system now boots right into RetroArch, with the performance CPU governor enabled. It also shuts down the system when RetroArch is quit, unless you press a keyboard key within 5 seconds after quitting, in which case you end up at the command line. It all seems to work great so far.
If you’re interested, I could post up the instructions?
Please do! I’d do it to this box.
Okay, here we go! I started with a clean Ubuntu 16.10 desktop installation, but I guess you could just as well use the server variety. The server version is probably preferable, even, as it’s more lean. Anyway, here are the steps you need to perform:
1. Set Ubuntu to start in console mode (you can skip this if using Ubuntu server flavor)
- Find GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub and change it to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“text”
- Update grub with sudo update-grub
- Tell systemd to not load the desktop:sudo systemctl enable multi-user.target --force [Note: I believe I got an error message here. Just ignore it.] sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target
2. Auto-login user
- sudo systemctl edit getty@tty1
- Add these lines and exchange “username” with the real user name:[Service] ExecStart= ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -a username --noclear %I $TERM
3. Make input in RetroArch work by setting correct permissions
- Add to /etc/udev/rules.d/99-evdev.rules (create the file if it doesn’t exist):KERNEL==“event*”, NAME=“input/%k”, MODE=“666”
- Then reload rules with sudo udevadm control --reload-rules.
4. Install cpufrequtils for controlling CPU governor
- sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils
5. Set CPU governor to “performance” at boot
- Run “sudo nano /etc/rc.local”, add the following lines and save the file:#!/bin/sh -e cpufreq-set -g performance
- sudo chmod ugo+x /etc/rc.local
- Run “sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/rc-local.service”, add the following lines at the end:[Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
- sudo systemctl enable rc-local.service
6. Add RetroArch Ubuntu PPA and install RetroArch and cores
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libretro/testing
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install retroarch
- Install desired cores like this (snes9x as example): sudo apt-get install libretro-snes9x
7. Autostart RetroArch after auto-login and make the system shut down after exiting RetroArch (with a 5 sec window to press key to abort and go to command line)
- Go to the user’s home directory.
- sudo nano .profile
- Add the following lines at the end of the file:retroarch
if read -r -s -n 1 -t 5 -p “Press any key to abort system shutdown and return to the command line…” then
[INDENT=2]echo " Shutdown aborted."[/INDENT] else
[INDENT=2]shutdown now[/INDENT] fi
I just got back from Thanksgiving at my parents’ house with fam. I’ll be attempting all of this tonight on the Asus Chromebox and update the thread after work.
Ahh, I thought you had already tried it when I read your PM earlier today. Let me know if you run into any issues and I’ll do my best to help out.
OK, I think I got it! A couple of questions though:
- I still see the Ubuntu when boot up, but it does run the script and a bunch of text and then immediately launches me into RA, so I take it this means I can get into the desktop if I need to (hence, the last instructions if I wanted to avert the shutdown and escape to the command line)?
- It’s now not reading my USB drives (where my ROMs/ISOs are stored), it can’t find them. HELP!
What happens if you press Ctrl+Alt+F7 while at the command line? If you get to the desktop this way, you can go back to the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+F1.
EDIT: Also, you can try running this from the command line: sudo service lightdm start
The drives probably need to be mounted and auto mounting isn’t being done by default in command line mode. Check out this page for some info: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB
In particular, that page mentions:
Auto-mounting (Ubuntu Server) By default, disk drives do not auto-mount in Ubuntu Server Edition. If you are looking for a lightweight solution that does not depend on HAL/DBUS, you can install “usbmount”.
I haven’t tried this myself (and can’t at the moment), but I believe this is where you should start looking.
[QUOTE=Brunnis;51559]What happens if you press Ctrl+Alt+F7 while at the command line? If you get to the desktop this way, you can go back to the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+F1.
EDIT: Also, you can try running this from the command line: sudo service lightdm start[/quote]
That’s the kicker: I didn’t see a place where I could type any commands! It flew by so fast upon bootup that it launches immediately into Retroarch. I also tried Ctrl+Alt+F7 while in RA, no reaction, and Ctrl+Alt+F1 brings me back out and then halts the script with no option to run any commands. Argh! I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
I did try the “usbmount” while I was setting it up before I went into the straight-into-Retroarch bootup cycle, and it does bring up ALL of the USB ports in the CN-60, but it does not detect anything plugged into them, which is another strange thing. I’m pretty sure I screwed that one up, but not sure how to fix it. I’ll do some more digging.