RetroPie in VM possible?

GhengisKhan

GhengisKhan

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I've already got one of the RetroPie kits that I use in the bedroom to play all my old games. I was just wondering if anyone here knows if it's possible to run RetroPie in some type of VM. Is there a VM that will simulate the hardware of a RaspberryPi 3? If there is, where would I go about finding it, and which VM software would run it best? I'm running Ubuntu 16.04.1
 
I assume the box running Ubuntu 16.04.01 has some kind of X86 CPU. If so then most virtualization software is not going to work, as most of it will probably not support running stuff for ARM chips. qemu may work though, might want to check in to that.
 
I couldn't get a straight answer anywhere. I ended up finding a YouTube video that showed someone installing Retropie directly in Ubuntu, and you can run it and close it like any other applications. I started the install before coming to work tonight. from what I've read it may or may not be done by the time I get home.
 
I have it running in a VM under VirtualBox running Ubuntu 16.04. I got everything installed correctly, but it seems like the CPU clock speed isn't handled correctly because NES games run so fast they're almost unplayable. Not sure if you can tune that out in VirtualBox or the VM itself.

But, yes. You can run RetroPie under an x86 VM.

I chose to use the Ubuntu 16.04 minimal install image. Running a basic XOrg setup with OpenBox.
 
Well. So far the install on Ubuntu has been somewhat successful. It installed just fine and all of my ROMs work, but the file system is a little different. I have tried to get cheats working but there is no "cheats" folder, and the RetroArch files are different as well. I cannot find a RetroArch.cfg file at all to even enable the in-game menu.
 
GhengisKhan said:
Well. So far the install on Ubuntu has been somewhat successful. It installed just fine and all of my ROMs work, but the file system is a little different. I have tried to get cheats working but there is no "cheats" folder, and the RetroArch files are different as well. I cannot find a RetroArch.cfg file at all to even enable the in-game menu.
Click to expand...
Sometimes you need to create the file yourself if you can't find it. Try copying it from the known good setup to matching place in the new one.
 
I created a "cheats" folder with a "settings" folder inside it like I found in an online guide, but I cannot seem to get anything working. I just now got the proper core loaded in RetroArch via the menu you can open from within ES, but I there is no "configs" folder or files like there is on the RetroPie per the instructions from the Retro Gaming with Rasberry Pii and Retropie thread, which I would need to be able to get the RetroArch menu to come up in-game.
 
OK, I was able to find retroarch.cfg in /etc but... it is read only and I cannot figure out how to edit/replace the file... Going to try some Google-Fu
 
well, I found the retroarch.cfg file in /etc but it appears to do nothing. I changed the lines to enable the in-game menu for RetroArch, but nothing happens when I hit the correct key combo. I've tried all 3 that are available, but none of them seem to work. I'm going to try swapping controllers from my RetroPie to my PC and see if they work to bring up the menu, but at this point I'm not very hopeful that this will work.

also, sorry for the multiple posts, I'm just sharing the difficulties I'm having in case someone else runs into any of these issues in the future and some of this may help them.
 
Tried my SNES type controller, same results. It doesn't bring up the in-game menu for RetroArch. I'm giving up for today.
 
Sorry I have no experience on RetroArch either. I am successfully running mame4all on pi3 currently. I don't use cheats on it though.
 
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