[smithers]

How to change partition sizes

In my builds I normally allocate the majority of space to RetroPie and a small-ish partition to KODI (around 2GB). This works for me but may not work for you, so here is how you can specify your own partition sizes.

This *must* be done prior to installing the image – once installed you cannot change partition sizes.

Ok, so once you have downloaded and extracted the image you want to go straight into the ‘NOOBS Files’ folder, then into the ‘os’ folder. In here you will find the folders that contain the installation files per OS. Lets say you wanted to change RetroPie so it no longer uses the majority of the SD card and instead you wanted OSMC to use the majority. Take the following steps:

– Open the ‘RetroPie’ folder
– Open the ‘partitions.json’ file in a text editor. It will look like this:

{
  "partitions": [
    {
      "label": "BOOT",
      "filesystem_type": "FAT",
      "partition_size_nominal": 57,
      "want_maximised": false,
      "uncompressed_tarball_size": 20
    },
    {
      "label": "retropie",
      "filesystem_type": "ext4",
      "partition_size_nominal": 3000,
      "want_maximised": true,
      "mkfs_options": "-O ^huge_file",
      "uncompressed_tarball_size": 1601
    }
  ]
}

The layout above shows the partition info for both the boot partition and the storage partition for RetroPie. Do not amend the ‘boot’ partition – this needs to stay as-is, but as you can see, the ‘want_maximised’ is set to ‘true’ on the storage partition (labelled ‘retropie’). This means that NOOBS will allocate all free space to this partition, so if OSMC is set to allocate 2GB in total then RetroPie would be allocated around 30GB when using a 32GB card (it would be a bit less than that in the real world, but you get the principal). First thing to do is change ‘want_maximised’ to ‘false’ and then set a value (in MB) in the ‘partition_size_nominal’ field. You can see I have set it as 3000MB, ie ~3GB – change this to 6000 for 6GB for example, then save and exit the file.

Now leave the RetroPie directory and enter the ‘OSMC_Pi2_Dual-Boot’ folder and again, open the ‘partitions.json’ file in a text editor. It will look like this:

{
    "partitions": [
        {
            "label": "boot-rbp2",
            "filesystem_type": "FAT",
            "partition_size_nominal": 80,
            "want_maximised": false,
            "mkfs_options": "-F32",
            "uncompressed_tarball_size": 18
        },
        {
            "label": "root-rbp2",
            "filesystem_type": "ext4",
            "partition_size_nominal": 1200,
            "uncompressed_tarball_size": 533,
            "want_maximised": false,
            "mkfs_options": "-F -I 256 -E stride=2,stripe-width=1024,nodiscard -b 4096"
        }
    ]
}

The boot partition (boot-rbp2) must bot be changed, only the ‘root-rbp2’ partition which is the storage partition. As you can see the root partition is set to ‘want_maximised: false’ – change this to ‘true’ and save the file. You don’t need to specify a different ‘partition_size_nominal’ size if ‘want_maximised’ is set to true.

Now NOOBS will allocate your specified partition size to the RetroPie partition and the rest of the space will be awarded to the OSMC partition.

The principle is the same for any os – KODI, Rasplex etc. – so you can use this method on any to change partition sizes, just remember not to change the boot partitions!!!

Hope this makes sense – good luck!

Steve

[smithers]

Some notes on v8:

# RetroPie

* Updated RetroPie to v3.2.1 (fresh install)

* Added a few more games to Ports: – OpenTTD (finally got it working!)
– OpenTyrian
– Super Mario War
– SuperTux

* Created a ‘Power’ menu so you no longer need to shut down / reboot
via ‘Start>Quit>Shutdown’ (so you can disable the ‘Start’ button function
in Emulation Station to make it child proof!)

* Added menu items to enable / disable the new power menu

* Added the option to always boot into KODI (you MUST use my new power menu
for this to work).

* Themed the new RetroPie Settings items

# KODI

* I will no longer be providing any pre-installed ‘addons’ in my builds

* OSMC – created a white ‘RetroPie’ logo for the home menu

[smithers]

Actually, now that I am thinking about it – is Joy2Key (or similar) what is used to control the RetroPie Setup Script menu, and if so, does that mean that the foundations are already there for the taking? Or is the joypad functionality controlled by something else?

[smithers]

[quote=109304]Awesome boot video, thanks.

One question, got it working but the video fades to white then I get the linux “last logged in…” etc then emulationstation starts. I have emulationstation set to load on boot. How do I get the nice fade from the white on boot video right into the emulationstation loading screen like the video shows.

Thanks.!!!

[/quote]

Hi. Sorry for delay in replying.

To allow the video to be interrupted by the Emulation Station loading screen (and prevent the terminal screen appearing), you need to edit a file as described in the Wiki page below:

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/splashscreen

Scroll down to the ‘Video Splash Screens’ section at the bottom and it describes everything you need to do.

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

Haha, yes I should probably read more of it actually. I have a bad habit of trying to figure things out myself, which can take forever. I suppose its just part of being a man – not reading instruction manuals! ;)

[smithers]

Doh! Typical. Although I am sure I have read that others have ran it from terminal? Maybe I need to build it from source rather than using debian package route? hmmm…

[smithers]

Ahaaa! Instead of being lazy I should have read your Wiki page before I posted, as the answer was right there!

By default it is coded to play the video all the way through before emulationstation loads, no matter how long the video- for a raspberry pi 1 a good video time is ~20-40 seconds, for the rpi 2 a good video time is ~5-10 seconds. if you wish to have emulationstation cut off your video as to make a seamless boot sequence you need to edit /etc/profile.d/10-emulationstation.sh and delete the first line from this:

while pgrep omxplayer &>/dev/null; do sleep 1; done
[ “tty” = “/dev/tty1” ] && emulationstation

so it looks like this:

[ “tty” = “/dev/tty1” ] && emulationstation

Just tried it and it worked fine, thanks! :) Please ignore my question above!

All the best.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=109352]It looks great smithers. Great work as always.

[/quote]

Thanks! :)

[quote=109290]I understand where you’re coming from, however I don’t have a keyboard as part of my setup – I use my laptop (WinSCP) to make changes to a gamelist, or add new games, then exit ES (rather than the lengthy process of rebooting) so the changes show up.

[/quote]

So if I am following you then you would mainly use it as a ‘refresh tool’ for emulation station, is that correct? And in that case, on exit, you wouldn’t want it to remain in the terminal, you would want it to keep the normal “loading Emulation Station in 5 seconds” functionality, is that right?

[smithers]

Hi.

I have installed OpenTTD (via sudo apt-get install openttd ), however I can’t get it to run from the terminal – I receive an error message stating:

Error: Couldn’t find any suitable video driver

Does anyone know how to run this from command line so it can be implemented into Emulation Station?

I have tried using the runcommand script line in the normal manner (used for other ports), which, if I understand correctly, is a way to easily get access to the framebuffer, however when trying that it does not bring anything up at all, not even the error message?

Any help appreciated.

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

Hi. Sorry for digging up an old(ish) post, however I have a boot video related question!

I am setting up a fresh install using the latest image – 3.2.1 – and have managed to add my boot video in the normal manner and it works. Happy days! However, the boot process seems to pause to allow the video to play in full, then it goes to a brief terminal screen and then displays the white Emulation Station ‘loading’ screen. It never used to do this in the previous version I had set up (v3). Is there a way I can revert it back to how it was before? The reason being is that my boot video is designed to be a smooth transition into the ES loading screen and this spoils the effect! :(

I have tried lengthening my video but it always allows the video to run its full course before continuing to load ES. I would like it to load in the background whilst my video plays. Hope this makes sense?

Is this possible?

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

It could be easily added, I think. The hardest part is finding a suitable icon, keeping with the theme. :/

Only thing I would say though is that if you are exiting Emulation Station into the terminal then I would say you are probably going to be using a keyboard straight away anyway. In fact, you have to press a key within a few seconds to remain in the terminal and prevent ES loading up again, so does that not make the ‘Exit Emulation Station’ menu button rather useless? Seems to me the <F4> key is just as easy?

[smithers]

I wouldn’t have thought you needed a driver for the Bluetooth dongle on the Pi? I didn’t anyway (using a Trust dongle). Not sure if you are aware though but you need a Bluetooth 4.0 compatible dongle to get your PS3 pads to work. I tried with a Bluetooth 2.0 for ages before realising that a v4 was needed!

[smithers]

Are you seeing a rainbow coloured square in the top right corner of the screen whilst playing? If so then you are having power issues, i.e. your Pi is not getting the power it needs to perform from your power supply.

I use and recommend minimum (genuine) 2amp power supply. I had slowdowns with SNES, MAME, PSX etc. when I had a bad quality PSU (it was marked as 2amp but performed worse than a 1amp spare I had!). Swapping it out to a genuine 2amp psu instantly solved all my problems and all 23 systems run pretty perfect now.

[smithers]

Thanks. Took a while to decide on what icons to use. I really liked the Google Material Design power menu but couldn’t find a high resolution vector image for it, or even a good enough sized image to lift them off. :/ I opted instead for the Samsung power menu!

The ‘Arcade Classics’ logo I found on the net after again much searching. It is for the MAME emulators. I also have an ‘Arcade’ theme (not seen in above video), which combines all MAME and FBA variants under one system. Should you want these logos you can find them all in my theme pack in the ‘Themes’ section on this forum.

Cheers.

[smithers]

2 things spring to mind for me – either Linix permission issues for a specific game screenshot (I.e. it won’t allow Emulation Station access to the screenshot), or you have a duplicated entry using the same screenshot twice. Can you narrow it down to a specific game that triggers the restart? If so then you can probably amend the files in question to fix it.

Also, if you SSH into the Pi and force it to crash then you may catch the errror message triggered which will help diagnose.

Good luck!

[smithers]

OK as promised, here is a video of what I have set up:

https://youtu.be/cbuucirv06A

Need to sort out some decent looking power icons but otherwise it works great! It could also be used to create a custom script every time you shutdown, ie to switch a boot partition etc.

If anyone artistic would care to create a set of good looking power buttons then that would be great!

Let me know if you would like a copy of what I have so far.

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

Hi.

I finally got round to creating a ‘Power’ option in Emulation Station. It works great from what I have tested so far.

I have an idea of how I would like it to look and feel but I am terrible with graphics design so it is very basic looking at the moment.

I will upload a video tonight and show you my idea, but basically I intend for there to be no gamelist inside the theme and instead only pictures of power and reboot buttons. Hope that makes sense but you will see what I mean in the video!

Cheers.
Steve

[smithers]

Hi.

I offer this option in my builds by the means of an extra ‘Arcade’ system, which encompasses all arcade emulators under one ROM folder allowing you to assign each ROM to a specific emulator.

The way I done it retains the original functionality and ROM locations of all individual emulators too (apart from advmame), so you can revert with no I’ll effect if needed.

I’m happy to share how I done it if you’re interested. Its a relatively easy affair.

[smithers]

Hi.
This is entirely possible. It is something I am going to implement on my arcade cab when I get round to it, but I will be creating a ‘Power’ menu with its own theme etc. I will happily share when I have it up and running.

The script I will use is:

sudo poweroff

It seems to shut the Pi down in the normal manner, however if anyone would care to correct me then go ahead – I could be wrong! I know there are shutdown commands to halt process etc. But the command above looks as though it halts the system the same as a normal shutdown via the emulation station ‘start menu’ would to me?

[smithers]

Well, RetroPie has a minimal base install of Raspbian if I am not mistaken, so an unzip application should be pre-installed. If so then the following should work:

unzip gaxe.zip /bor

Or

unzip gaxe.zip /Paks

(Can’t remember the file structure I set up for OpenBOR off the top of my head but you get the idea. You’re looking to unzip it directly into the correct filepath so beware of creating extra folders by mistake in your zip file).

You would need to be inside the parent directory of the folder you want to unzip into. If that makes sense? :s

[smithers]

[quote=107075]Just wanted to say thanks for these images. I got the KODI/Raspberry Pi image up and running and am loving it!

[/quote]

You’re welcome – glad its working for you and thanks for taking the time to make a post! :)

[smithers]

[quote=107518]Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be a jerk, I was just surprised, and no, I guess I missed that part of the readme.

[/quote]

No worries man – I didn’t think you were being a jerk!

[quote=107521]Actually, I just went through this entire thread, and no one seems to be attempting to boot from USB. They are hosting their roms from USB, but not hosting OpenElec and RetroPie on the USB.

Also in the Readme.txt that comes with this, I can’t seem to find any guidance on where to put my roms on the USB stick if I want to use it to host my roms, zdoom, and the like.

[/quote]

So out of curiosity – what is the real world advantage of hosting everything on USB rather than just ROMs? Is it a speed thing or is it more so a reliability thing? (i.e. to prevent corruption of the SD card). And yes, I don’t mention in my readme on how to do this. Its all foreign territory to me! :s

[smithers]

[quote=107512]Thanks for the reply smither.

I will try adding another build and see what happens.
As for the Date/Time in Raspbian, its incorrect and I am connected to the internet so for some reason the auto internet time adjustment is not kicking in. Its actually a few days behind.
Thanks again

[/quote]

Well, I don’t have Raspbian installed and unfortunately I don’t have any spare SD cards at the moment as I gave my spare away to my neice and nephew (made them a gaming console!). So it would be a while before I could test this myself, until I buy a new SD card.

Have a look at this post though and you may find the answer you need:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=447594&sid=83a6380f8bedbe049b7b7ae7cd53460a#p447594

[smithers]

[quote=107509]

smithers wrote:

haris1977 wrote:

I can see output of file names in the ‘failed transfers’ section (lower left of filezilla). I also see red flagging files in the top ‘live transfer’ section which changes constantly as running.

When i see that i always stop the transfer.

Hi.

Sorry for delay in replying. Did you get sorted with this in the end?

Nope:( I tried to upload to home/pi (rather than home/pi/bor) with the same results (+8000 file transfer fails in lower left of Filezilla). I even tried WinSCP, but i get error code 4 (error message from server: failure). What i noticed is a transfer failure in gaxe\Paks\mod\<data>\ folder.

*gaxe is Golden Axe game

Being stuck here.

Edit: I tried to manually copy some folders. The subfolders with transfer errors are:

– gaxe\Paks\mod\data\chars
– gaxe\Paks\mod\data\scenes
– gaxe\Paks\mod\data\scripts
– gaxe\Paks\mod\data\sprites
– gaxe\Paks\mod\data\sounds

Tried with other paks too (e.g Mortal Kombat). Same result. Errors when copying “data” folder..

Any help appreciated!

[/quote]

Bizarre, because it works ok for me? :/

Only thing I could suggest is making a ‘.pak’ file again using the tool I linked (instructions should be included), or zip the mods up, transfer them over then unzip them natively on the Pi. That way you aren’t copying over a tone of files, only 1 large one. Other than that I don’t know what to suggest as its working for me?

[smithers]

[quote=107353]ok, I switched back to default theme in rasplex and managed to find the wifi config there. yay. I switched back to aeon theme np.

Can the retropie shortcut from aeon be installed through the default theme? That would simplify things so I won’t need to go back and forth just to tweak extra settings that aren’t in aeon.

[/quote]

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying. Glad you got sorted.

Unfortunately there is no way to edit the default theme, or I would have done that. If ever I build a new RetroPie / RasPlex build then I will be sure to add in a WiFi setup option though.

[smithers]

[quote=107500]

…what was the point of installing it from USB? It didn’t install to USB. Bah!
[/quote]

I suspect somebody hasn’t read the ‘readme’ file!

The purpose of a USB install is to get the maximum space available out of your SD card. The standard version of NOOBS doesn’t allow installing via USB and therefore if you install my latest image from the SD card then you’re going to lose around 2gb of space just to install files, which you can’t recover. I didn’t like that so after much searching I found a github page for a USB install method, compiled it and now use it in all my builds.

2gb is precious on an SD card!

There has been much discussion on running from an external drive in this thread already. If you have a look through you should find your answer. It is not something I do personally so I can’t really offer any assistance.

[smithers]

[quote=107293]Thank you so much. Your work has saved me. Is there anyway to expand the partition for openelec though? I have a 32gb sdcard and the majority goes to the retropie partition. I know this is to give room for games but I keep running out of space for kodi.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

[/quote]

You can only set partition sizes prior to install I’m afraid. If you look back through this thread you will see this has been covered a few times but unfortunately there is no way to expand the partition once installed.

[smithers]

[quote=107325]

First like to say thank you for all your hard work.

How do I set openelec to boot at default instead of retro pie?

Whichever system you last used should be the one that boots next. For example, if you shutdown while using openelec, it will be what boots when you turn your system on. If you shutdown while using retropie it will be what boots.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

[/quote]

Correct – thanks. This is the way I like to have mine setup. There would be a easy(ish) way of making the pi default to KODI each time but it would mean creating a ‘Power’ theme in emulation station so I could create my own shutdown script (that forces the KODI partition again on next boot). I personally like it the way it is but I appreciate everyone has their own preference.

[smithers]

[quote=107280]Hey smithers thanks for all the work I have been using the old Kodi V4 that had the beta version of kodi and thought I would give the new OSMC build a go. I saw that the OSMC version available online is of the kodi 15.1 variety but when I loaded your dual boot one I found that it is still an older version of OSMC. I thought maybe I could do an in place update of the system and found it is throwing errors when trying to update through the OSMC settings. Is there any way to update this as I need a version that is using Kodi >= version 15 due to the MySQL database I use in my mixed windows/linux environments. If not I will need to move back to the openelec V4 with the beta kodi.

[/quote]

Hi.

Sorry for delay in replying. So the reason I use an older version – Helix – is because I (and others) find that the v15 builds seem to have a few bugs in them which affects performance and reliability. Last build I tried was 15.2 and it wasn’t compatible with some of the addons I use but also I was seeing crashes / freezes quite often. Switching back to v14 solved all of this.

I did release one (or two?) of my builds with KODI 15.2 if you look back through the postvyou could probably find it, if not I’ll post a link. You could rip out the KODI section of that build and pair it up with my latest RetroPie image then install via NOOBS – that would get you what you want.

[smithers]

[quote=107272]Hi Smithers,
As usual, great work.
The WIFI instructions worked great for me also I got the build to install from usb by using a different flash drive (Sandisk low profile 32GB USB 2.0 formated as Fat32).

I also installed Sprinz-tv build in kodi which works great.
I was wondering if I decided to add a second profile with an additional build if it will have enough space for that. Also if 0 cache was selected to save cache to sd card??

My only real problem now which is minor, is setting the correct time/date in Raspbian.
Do you know of an easy way in doing this??
Thanks in advance.

Do you have a donation link where people can donate.
You are very deserving of such. You have save me a lot of work not having to do all this myself and I very much appreciate it.

Keep up the great work.

[/quote]

Hi, sorry for delay in replying. Glad you got it working! I guess that backs up the theory that the NOOBS installer doesn’t like larger flash drives.

As for KODI profiles – its not something I have ever dabbled with, but I guess it depends on what build you use for KODI in the other profile? My latest minimal build I made is around 400mb which is a few hundred MB less than beast build I think. All I could say is give it a try?

Whilst in the subject, I am exploring the possibility if making my own KODI wizard that would add in my build and my games menu. No promises or ETA on that but its a possibility for a build in the future maybe. Would make things easier for upgrades etc. as it’s not always practical to restart everything when a new build comes along!

As for the date & time in Raspbian – I have never tried to fiddle with it, I assume it is managed via the internet since the pi does not have a built in clock? Therefore if you do not have the internet set up then the time would be wrong (like KODI which rolls back to Jan 1970 or something when no network is detected). Are you seeing an incorrect date or no date at all?

As for donations – I couldn’t accept any money for what I do, but thanks for the offer. :) If anyone deserves donations then it is the devs of RetroPie, Emulation Station, KODI ports etc as they do all the really hard work, and for free, which is very admirable. :)

I imagine people don’t realise how much hard work has already gone into projects such as RetroPie, Recalbox etc. to make it a much smoother ride for the end user – if you were to try and set up emulation station from scratch it would be a much much longer and harder affair. I don’t mean for this to sound patronising at all, more just an acknowledgement and appreciation of the work that is put in for these projects, especially when they are released as free downloads.

All the best.
Steve

[smithers]

[quote=107255]I can see output of file names in the ‘failed transfers’ section (lower left of filezilla). I also see red flagging files in the top ‘live transfer’ section which changes constantly as running.

When i see that i always stop the transfer.

[/quote]
Hi.

Sorry for delay in replying. Did you get sorted with this in the end?

[smithers]

Are you sure it’s not just a warning that you’re seeing? Are the you seeing an output of file names in the ‘failed transfers’ section in filezilla or is it just red flagging files in the top ‘live transfer’ section?

I always get red flagged files when transferring large quantities of data through filezilla, but it will try again straight away and succeed with the transfer. So as long as nothing shows in the ‘failed transfers’ section then everything has transferred over just fine.

[smithers]

[quote=107232]Thanks i will try it:)

Just a bug that i saw: In retropie (with xbox compatible controller) when you select the option to toggle off the text that is displayed when loading or exiting a game, the moment you enter the retropie setup script, it hangs (in the message of expanding the partition)

I reproduced it many times and all of them with the same result. Doesn’t happen with the option to on:)

Just to let y know..

[/quote]

That is not a bug, rather that is the whole purpose of my ‘enable / disable’ script! When command line access is turned off the transitions look nice however terminal applications won’t be output to the screen (including options inside RetroPie setup script). That’s why I gave the option of being able to turn them on or off when you need to work in the terminal.

[smithers]

Very strange. Filezilla works fine for me, although I have got into the habit of just using Linux on my laptop lately.

You could try using WinSCP instead but it sounds like you may have permission errors. Try a chmod or chown command on the /home/pi/bor/ folder maybe?

[smithers]

[quote=106948]Can I load my own version of RetroPie or is your specific to use this? Were there ALOT of config changes for this to work with Rasplex?

[/quote]

You could load your own version of RetroPie yes, no problem. You would only need to add in a ‘Rasplex’ theme and script (or just add the script into the ‘ports’ section, whatever your preference is I guess).

You would need to create a tarball of your RetroPie setup though of course. This isn’t hard if you have a linux PC available to use, but you will have to experiment to get the final ‘.tar.xz’ file-size down to less than 4GB (it is a limitation of the ‘FAT 32’ file format that NOOBS requires). That means you’d need to remove some roms, if you have a ton on there.

I have my own personal full backup of RetroPie that I can install via NOOBS and it has a ton of roms pre-loaded for MAME, SNES, Megadrive, Master System, PC Engine, Gameboy Colour, GameBoy Advance, Spectrum, C64, Amiga, 32x, Wonderswan, NES, Ports, along with screenshots etc. and when compressed it is under 4GB. I had to remove FBA, ScummVM and PSX games as the folders were just too big to include, but its easy enough to add back in again as I back up all my roms on my NAS drive.

[Author]

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