ArchLinuxARM based PiPlay (Working playground)
  • Yep, ArchLinux based, built for a RPi B+ that i received yesterday :p


    * What it isn't (sorry)
    - an official PiPlay image
    - a full desktop environment install.
    - an image that will fullfill all your needs
    - wifi friendly (although a few tools are installed, you'll have to DIY the Archway. check out their incredible wiki)
    - tested with older RPi
    - THE super-extra-light-system. i just installed whatever i wanted to :D
    - (Note : devtools and lots of usefull stuff installed)
    - the beginning of an alternate image disk that will pop up at each piplay version.
    - 42

    * What it is :
    - an early first shot, for the fun of playing with the new Pi
    - a mostly configured and ready to run archlinux based Piplay (e.g: o/c & mem split configured)
    - piplay is very incomplete (a few emulators, no webui, main menu only, …)
    - the build is PICADE centered (sorry ^^)
    - (Note: please do NOT use picade-piplay tool/script or it will mess up things while overwriting various files with ones made for a Debian based Piplay)
    - emulators from piplay : dgen-sdl-1.32, fba, mame4all-pi, pcsx_rearmed, pisnes
    - (Note : all of those preconfigured ; mame4all, NeoGeo(fba), pisnes tested)
    - emulators from arch (absolutely unconfigured, those are there so that you can fool around with them as you please) : dgen-sdl 1.32-4, mednafen 0.9.36.2-1, snes9x 1.53-8, stella 4.0-1, vice 2.4-6, … and that's it if i'm not mistaken.



    * Notes
    I probably have forgotten various points. Oh, well...

    Most of the process was easy thanks to http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv6/raspberry-pi image file.

    Most "troubles" i had were about pygame (build from source as a last resort) and python2 /vs/ python3 (piplay being python2 and default in arch is python3 - came up with a super-extra-ugly hack here, there's just no faster one : a symlink).

    I tried to make the image file 4GB frienly (targetting 3,9GB -- including 1.3GB free for rootfs) from my 16GB card but i'm unsure i made it right…
    In the worst case it should work with any card bigger than 4GB.


    Note to the Piplay team : terminal is spammed with « libpng warning : iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile », unsure why.

    Hope you'll enjoy this build :-)


    ——————————
    edit:
    ~1.2GB download here : https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3QhUcFHXJRgb1F2Q0FDS1BiVnc&usp=drive_web

    Usefull info:
    - uncompress
    $ tar xzf picade-piplay-archlinux.dd.img.gz
    - push it to sdcard, try
    $ sudo dd if=picade-piplay-archlinux.dd.img of=/dev/XXXXX bs=1M
    Change bs to lower value in case of failure (e.g: bs=4k)
    - ethernet is dhcp
    - sshd running
    - user pi is sudoer, password is raspberry ; you may want to disable root account (root/root btw).
    - to change menu items :
    $ nano piplay/pimame-menu/config.yaml
    - if you want to use the "Roms - Load from NFS" menu item
    $ nano bin/nfs_roms
    edit SERV (ip), DVOL (nfs export) and DIR (path/to/folder) items, then mount the nfs share (using the now configured menu item), and create roms dirs if needed :
    $ roms_dir=/home/pi/pimame/roms
    $ cd $roms_dir
    $ for rep in 2600 advmame gb gba genesis gg mame4all neogeo nes ngpc pifba psx scummvm sms snes tg16 c64; do
    $ if [ ! -d $rep ]; then mkdir -p $roms_dir/$rep && echo "[info] fix ok [$roms_dir/$rep]"; fi
    $ done
    , push you roms in there and you're done.
    ——————————
  • This is awesome! Well done!


    42 :D
  • I was really hoping it WAS 42.
  • Gotta love 42
  • Sweet. Great Job!
  • On a more serious note, I am quite interested in helping work on this. Although I have never really used Arch before, but i'll give it a shot :D
    I'm just downloading now!
  • I'm extremely interested in an Arch-based emulator station. Have you made any further progress on this?
  • @harusp3x
    i'm not planning on making this a full piplay thing, sorry.
    but since i kind of like this build and i'm fooling around with it when i'm willing to give it some time, i may upload another disk image for those interested one of these days.

    notable «progress»:
    - added default config for 2 (xbox 360) controllers for mame4all, pisnes, fba (on top of picade conf).
    - got a(n almost cleanly) working kodi/xbmc menu item ^^
    - fully working yaourt (pacman wrapper that seriously helps install packages from Arch User Repository).

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!