Raspberry Pi 4: How to Run Emulators Like RetroPie

[Admin]

Currently, none of the major emulation platforms officially support Raspberry Pi 4, but with these instructions you can get RetroPie or Lakka up and running.

Raspberry Pi 4: How to Run Emulators Like RetroPie : Read more

 

[mitch074]

"However, if you simply tell the Pi to launch EmulationStation after Windows every time, it works." - strange, as I thought the Raspberry was running a modified Debian distro with the LXDE window manager, not an unknown build of MS Windows...

 

[ksuquix]

Out of curiosity, has anyone following this gotten mouse functions (e.g. trackball) to work on pi4 yet?

 

[motosport]

Thank you for this article but I have a problem, the emulation station is crashing the first time that I launch it and keeps crashing until I reset the configuration in the installer. With this, I can launch it but it does not appear to behave correctly...it never saves my configuration and I don't have any possibilities to launch any games. Do you have any idea why ?

Thanks,
Alexandros

 

[Skvli]

I bought the Rpi 4 with 4GB of RAM. Would setting the memory setting higher than 256mb be adviseable? I don't care too much past N64/PS1 performance. That's what I'm really going for.

 

[redgarl]

Bought a PS Classic and hacked it. No latency, and work like a charm. Way better than a rasbery pie.

 

[Graylord]

I got Retropie working flawlessly on pi4 using the method previously described in this article, but managed to accidentally ruin my image later, so I came back to the article and see that it has now been changed and I cannot get the new method to work. Following the steps, I cannot get the pi4 supported version as" git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4 " results in "permission denied" errors. I tried to use chown on the entire ./git folder, but just got messages that I do not have permission to use those operations, and my command line experience ends there, and I don't know what to do.

The old method just tricking the retropie into thinking you're a pi3 worked perfectly for me, but I cannot for the life of me figure out where you went to manually config the platform permanently, and the old article is no longer available, you have also blocked waybackmachine, so I cannot tell what you originally did. Could you please post the old method or let me know where to config the platform?

 

[Guipster]

Following the steps, I cannot get the pi4 supported version as" git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4 " results in "permission denied" errors.

The problem on this tutorial is the --depth=1 on the git clone command (item 4 on this tutorial). To solve that, just remove that part, which will result on the line below (just copy it).
sudo git clone https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git

Hope it helps!

 

[SpinLock08]

Thanks for this tutorial. I got as far as the "git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4" part, but got the following:
"error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied"

Noob that I am, I figured I'd add sudo, as in "sudo git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4". This time it read
"fatal: Unable to create '/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/.git/index.lock': Permission denied"

Any tips? I really am new to Linux. Thanks in advance!

 

[darth_pi]

Thanks for this tutorial. I got as far as the "git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4" part, but got the following:
"error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied"

Noob that I am, I figured I'd add sudo, as in "sudo git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4". This time it read
"fatal: Unable to create '/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/.git/index.lock': Permission denied"

Any tips? I really am new to Linux. Thanks in advance!

I had the same problem and what I did to solve this problem was to change into the root uer then run the command git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4

But since the root user does not have any password set by default in raspberry pi you will have to give the root user a password first with this command passwd root then change into root simply by typing in su root
Hope this works for you too as it did for me.

 

[Openupitsdave]

I followed this tutorial perfectly for use with Raspbian Lite, but when I type in sudo git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git, it says "sudo: git: command not found".

And when I tried using Raspbian Buster (regular, without recommended apps), I get the error "error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied". So I tried using the methods in the following two posts, but both failed as well:

But since the root user does not have any password set by default in raspberry pi you will have to give the root user a password first with this command passwd root then change into root simply by typing in su root
Hope this works for you too as it did for me.

I typed in "passwd root" and it said I am not allowed to view or modify password for root.

The problem on this tutorial is the --depth=1 on the git clone command (item 4 on this tutorial). To solve that, just remove that part, which will result on the line below (just copy it).
sudo git clone https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git

Also did not work. I got the same "permission denied" error.

I had it working with the old tutorial except I could never get Autostart to Emulationstation to work which is why I keep coming back...Now nothing works. Does anyone know where I can find the old tutorial? I forgot how to manually change the version to rpi3. EDIT: I figured out how to change the platform version: do cd RetroPie-Setup then sudo __platform=rpi3 ./retropie_setup.sh

This tutorial needs an update or a rollback.

 

[sulti]

There's an error in pt. 4 of this tutorial.
There is really no need to use 'sudo' while cloning git repositories, it is just a process for downloading files.
So it all should look like:

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git
cd RetroPie-Setup
git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4
sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

But if You already did "sudo git clone...." at first, then You have to use sudo for next git commands:

sudo git fetch && sudo git checkout fkms_rpi4
^- Yes - two sudo's, because these are two different commands!

===edit===
And for clarification - You can substitute all of these three git commands by just one:

git clone --branch fkms_rpi4 --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git

and then

cd Retropie-Setup
sudo ./retropie_setup.sh

 

[Adonis@hk]

Thanks for this tutorial. I got as far as the "git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4" part, but got the following:
"error: cannot open .git/FETCH_HEAD: Permission denied"

Noob that I am, I figured I'd add sudo, as in "sudo git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4". This time it read
"fatal: Unable to create '/home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/.git/index.lock': Permission denied"

Any tips? I really am new to Linux. Thanks in advance!

input sudo su will get you a root shell without needing a password.

 

[zzak]

I had the same problem and what I did to solve this problem was to change into the root uer then run the command git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4

But since the root user does not have any password set by default in raspberry pi you will have to give the root user a password first with this command passwd root then change into root simply by typing in su root
Hope this works for you too as it did for me.

easiest fix is
sudo -i
cd /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup
git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4
exit

 

[zzak]

The problem on this tutorial is the --depth=1 on the git clone command (item 4 on this tutorial). To solve that, just remove that part, which will result on the line below (just copy it).
sudo git clone https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git

Hope it helps!

easiest fix is
sudo -i
cd /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup
git fetch && git checkout fkms_rpi4
exit

 

[pc42]

I'm getting the following error now:

Could not successfully build mupen64plus - N64 emulator MUPENPlus
(GLideN64/projects/cmake/plugin/Release/mupen42plus-video-GLideN64.so no found).

I was able to build RetroPie in October. I guess the branch fkms_rpi4 is broke now. Any suggestions?

 

[JonnieCache]

fkms_rpi4 is either broken or I'm not as smart as I thought I once was. I have tried and tried to get this working. When I run retropie_setup.sh, I get so many errors, it's not even funny. Does anyone have any luck installing RetroPie on a RPi4 with the current state of affairs?

 

[pc42]

I finally got it working on rpi4 (with 4GB RAM).

I started everything fresh. Downloaded and flashed Raspberian latest version (2019-09-26-raspbian-buster-full.zip).

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Go to RaspberryPi Configuration -> Performance -> Set GPU Memory to 256 MB

Then get the repo by
git clone https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git -b fkms_rpi4
git checkout gives permission denied error, so don't try that.

Since, this is an active branch, after several attempts I found that cmitu's commit on Dec 1st fixed the build issue. If you want to get the exact version which I was able to successfully built, then use
git checkout a73b7ac0b44abc79d8d3262b0cd08dcc83d100c9
Follow regular instructions for retropie_setup.sh. It works like a charm.