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).