All gamepad configs forgotten on reboot

charlesv

It seems that after a few reboots, my batocera install forgets all gamepad configurations: this includes the keyboard (pressing a key prompts to remap gamepads). I’ve tried an XBox One controller and 8bitdo SN30+, both have the same issue. Has happened on v34 and v35 on a Raspberry Pi 4 (1GB), using an external drive (exFAT) for ROMs.

Any ideas how I can begin to troubleshoot? Removing es_input.cfg seems to “work”, but I… don’t think I should need to do this.

Thanks in advance, and if there are any specific logs to look at would love to go hunting.

Atari

charlesv using an external drive (exFAT) for ROMs

To quote the wiki:

FAT32 and extFAT are outdated filesystems. Yes, they are well supported under most OS’s (you bet, those filesystems are over forty years old!) but they have restrictions in terms of maximum file size (FAT32 cannot store files larger than 4GB, which most 6th gen and above console ROMs exceed) and the ability to support the exec bit required to run certain Linux applications. It will also limit the use of certain emulators and systems that rely on features like symbolic links or special character filename handling, neither of which are possible with FAT32 or exFAT.

In short: don’t use several decade old standards and expect them to function well nowadays.

If you must use a Windows compatible FS, NTFS is far better an option.

charlesv

Is the issue that the entire config is stored on the external drive?

Is there any way to just access ROMs from the drive? Key to me was Mac compatibility, not windows, so NTFS wasn’t viable, given how fickle MacFUSE is.

Either way, it doesn’t explain why the setting might persist reboots, or writing the config to a text file would fail on exFAT despite the limitations of the file system.

Atari

You are right in that there’s no explicit reason it shouldn’t work. But with exFAT, what I’m suspecting is that the file you’re editing is more susceptable to being corrupted. If it gets corrupted, boom go your settings.

The alternative is: there is some sort of incompatible character being written to your es_input.cfg. It would be nice to compare the es_input.cfg from when it’s working and when it’s not working to see.

charlesv

Thanks – i’m doing a dance to try and build an ext4 version of the external drive and will try again to see if it reproduces. I’ll back up the es_input when it’s working and circle back with a broken one if it does again.