[mythtv-users] MythGame and SNES emulator woes

[byron]

Jesse Guardiani wrote:
> byron wrote:
> 
>> Jesse Guardiani wrote:
>>  
>>
>>> byron wrote:
>>>
>>>    
>>>
>>>> My recent Myth project has been to get MythGame functional.  My goal
>>>> was
>>>> to get MAME, NES and SNES all working through the MythGame interface.
>>>> So far I've been successful in getting MAME and NES roms detected and
>>>> playable through MythGame.  However SNES has proven to be a little
>>>> trickier.
>>>>
>>>> My problem:
>>>> When going into the games menu it scans for SNES games every time but
>>>> never updates the UI or the database as far as I can tell.  Running the
>>>> emulators from a console works in both zsnes and snes9x.  I do not see
>>>> any info logged to the backend log with verbose set to all, nor do I
>>>> see
>>>> anything sent the console when running mythfrontend from the command
>>>> line.  I have tried zipped and unzipped roms with varying permissions
>>>> all to no avail.  I've also tried using both zsnes and snes9x without
>>>> success.
>>>>
>>>> Here is my config as it appears in setup
>>>>
>>>> Dropdown: Zsnes
>>>> binary: /usr/games/bin/zsnes -m
>>>> rompath: /media/emu/snes/roms
>>>> screenshots: (blank)
>>>>
>>>> The setup seems very simple I just don't see what I'm doing wrong.
>>>> Anyone have any ideas?  Is there a way to increase logging with
>>>> mythfrontend?
>>>>         
>>>
>>> Yeah, wrap the snes9x binary with a shell script that logs command line
>>> options as well as
>>> command output.
>>>
>>> That's what I did. I had more trouble with xmame than snes9x though.
>>> I'll try to get you
>>> my command line later tonight.
>>>
>>> First, some questions:
>>> 1.) Why zsnes? Why not snes9x? I've had better performance, features,
>>> and general luck
>>>    with snes9x 0.43. Just don't forget to make it suid root or DGA won't
>>> work.
>>> 2.) What versions are you running?
>>> 3.) You're running Gentoo, right?
>>> 4.) Which ROMs? Some don't pass their checksums, like Super Metroid, so
>>> MythGame
>>>     won't add them.
>>>
>>>     
>>
>>
>> 1: No reason in particular.  I vaguely remember seeing that some people
>> preferred zsnes.  However, snes9x exhibits the same behavior.  I have no
>> real preference either way.
>>
>> 2: MythTV 0.18.1
>>    MythGame 0.18.1
>>    zsnes 1.42
>>    snes9x 1.43
>>    MySQL 4.1.14
>>
>> 3: Yes
>>
>> 4: Roms were retrieved from Vimm's Lair http://vimm.net (if it makes any
>> difference).
>>    Super Mario World
>>    Super Mario Kart
>>    Super Mario All-Stars
>>    Super Mario RPG
>>    Legend of Zelda (Link to the past)
>>    Donkey Kong Country
>>    Final Fantasy 3
>>    Super Castlevania IV
>>
>>
>> I'll write up a wrapper script tonight to see if I can get some more
>> visibility on the matter.
>>   
> 
> 
> First: Your mythtv user is part of the games group, right?
> Second: I'm running MySQL 4.0.x. Not sure if that matters.
> 
> So those roms are in:
>    /media/emu/snes/roms
> 
> And when you run snes9x as your mythtv user with a rom in that dir as an
> argument it works?
> 
> In that case something is probably wrong with just the scan portion of
> MythGame.
> So... when you run mythfrontend as your mythtv user from the command
> line, you don't see
> any commandline output when you scan your rom dirs?
> 
> I run my mythfrontend from kdm and I think I remember seeing lots of
> stuff in
> /home/mythtv/.xsession-errors when I scan my rom dir.
> 
> If you go the wrapper route, definitely look for the command line
> MythGame is using to scan
> your rom dir, then try to run that exact commandline as your mythtv user
> and see if anything
> odd happens.
> 

Yes the Myth user is part of the games group.

Yes the roms are in the location configured in the setup
(/media/emu/snes/roms).

Yes something like "/usr/games/bin/snes9x -fs
/media/emu/snes/roms/SuperMarioKart.smc" works from the command line as
the Myth user.

When running mythfrontend from the command line the only info I see on
the console when scanning games comes from Xmame.  Nothing about fceu or
snes9x|zsnes, even though I have fceu working correctly.

Unfortunately there was no helpful information in
/home/myth/.xsession-errors.

How do I find out what command is being used to scan the rom dir for the
SNES emulator?

Thanks

byron