Behind the Eyes

Tag: HowTo

  • RetroPie on the Intel NUC Hades Canyon

    RetroPie on the Intel NUC Hades Canyon

    Hey everyone! Been a while since I wrote a blog and I figured this would be a good one. So, because of the COVID-19, and everyone Social Distancing and schools being closed down. I decided that I was going to do a project. Me and my boys love retro gaming. We have used RetroPie in the past on Raspberry Pi’s and loved it, but we wanted to play some more modern games like from their Wii or Gamecube or PlayStation2, and those just can’t be done on the Raspberry Pi version of RetroPie.

    I read a blog about running RetroPie on an Intel NUC, which I followed and for the most part, I got it working right. Some of my lessons learned will be in this HowTo. But after a while, we noticed that it just didn’t perform like it does on the PC or laptop with a decent graphics card. So after doing some research I found the Intel NUC gaming section, and purchased a Hades Canyon, which I feel will give us the performance we are looking for. Plus it will definitely give us the storage since PS2 Games are HUGE!

    So, without further ado, here is how to get RetroPie working on your Hades Canyon (or regular NUC):

    First thing you going to want to do is install Linux on the NUC. Burn the 18.04 Server ISO to a thumbdrive. I downloaded the Live Server version, but you can use the alternate. I recommend Server since you don’t need to install the full Desktop expirience, and I can use the space savings for more ROMS!!

    Next, plug it in to the front USB port. Connect a keyboard up to the other USB port and connect the video and network. Luckily I have a mini switch next to my TV, so I just connected to that. Hades Canyon and NUC have WiFi, but I don’t use it.

    Power on the NUC and it will automatically boot off of USB. You’ll get the GRUB menu and it will start the Live Installer for Ubuntu. I kept everything default, full disk, no LVM, no Encryption, DHCP on the Ethernet settings, and clicked install.

    Setting up the user, I kept this simple and as close to the regular RetroPie settings:

    • User: Retro Pie
    • Server Name: retropie
    • Username: pi
    • Password: raspberry

    I also told it to enable SSH and to download my public SSH keys from Launchpad.net and to allow remote password authentication.

    After a few minutes, the install completed and I unplugged the USB thumbdrive and reboot the NUC. It restarted in Ubuntu 18.04.4.

    I like to use the HWE kernel for my RetroPie since the newer kernel’s have new features and RetroPie might make use of them. So I do the following:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04

    And then you reboot the NUC again. Once it comes back up you are ready to do RetroPie installation. This is what I did:

    SSH into the NUC

    Set it so the the pi user can execute sudo without a password (makes scripting much easier)

    sudo sed -i -e '$a\pi ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' /etc/sudoers

    Type the pi password and you’re all set. You won’t have to type that password again if you use sudo.

    Now to add the universe repo and all of the RetroPie dependancies:

    sudo apt-add-repository universe
sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y 
sudo apt install xorg openbox pulseaudio alsa-utils menu \ libglib2.0-bin python-xdg at-spi2-core dbus-x11 git \
dialog unzip xmlstarlet --no-install-recommends -y

    Now we need to create an OpenBox autorun script to start terminal and start Emulation Station

    mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox
echo 'gnome-terminal --full-screen --hide-menubar -- \ emulationstation' >> ~/.config/openbox/autostart

    Next, create the .xsession file:

    echo 'exec openbox-session' >> ~/.xsession

    Now we need to make it so X11 starts on reboots:

    echo 'if [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]; then' >> ~/.bash_profile
sed -i '$ a\startx -- -nocursor >/dev/null 2>&1' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '$ a\fi' ~/.bash_profile

    Next, we make it so the that pi user automatically logs in and that way Emulation Station will be what you see on the screen:

    sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d
sudo sh -c 'echo [Service] >> /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf' 
sudo sed -i '$ a\ExecStart=' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.service.d/override.conf
sudo sed -i '$ a\ExecStart= /sbin/agetty --skip-login --noissue --autologin pi %I $TERM' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf
sudo sed -i '$ a\Type=idle' /etc/systemd/system/getty@tty1.servcie.d/override.conf

    Now we are ready to download RetroPie from the Git Repo and run the installation scripts:

    git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup.git
sudo RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh

    This will start the RetroPie installer. Accept the EULA and select Basic Installation. Select Yes to install all packages from Core and Main. They system will then start downloading and building RetroPie directly on the NUC

    Note: This takes some time. Grab a beverage, some food. I’ll wait.

    Once building and installation is complete, you can reboot the NUC from the menu. However, I have a few more customizations that I do.

    I use an Xbox One Controller with my NUC, so I have to install the driver for it on Ubuntu. To do that, cursor down to Driver, and select the xboxdrv and install from source. It takes about 3 minutes to download and build the driver. When it completes, you are back at the Menu. Select Back from the bottom to go up a level, and do it again to get back to the main menu.

    I also install Dolphin Emulator, and the Playstation2 Emulator, and they are found in the experimental section. They can be a trick to setup and work correctly. For me to get Dolphin to recognize the Xbox Controller correctly, I actually had to change my .bash_profile to enable cursor and window mode so that I could use the mouse on the screen so I could point and click the settings. Now that I have that done, I backed up the configuration from the old NUC, and just copied it to the new one with ease.

    I also use Dolphin for Wii games, and I have a Dolphin Bar so that I can use my Wii controllers. This was a slight bear to setup. First, you need to create a couple udev rules:

    sudo touch /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules
sudo vi /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

    Now paste the following into your rules file:

    #GameCube Controller Adapter
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0337", TAG+="uaccess"

#Wiimotes or DolphinBar
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0306", TAG+="uaccess"
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0330", TAG+="uaccess"

    Now, you can plug in the Dolphin Bar to a USB port and connect your controller. Make sure you are in Mode 4 for emulation mode on the Dolphin Bar, and then start Dolphin emulator by running it from /opt/retropie/emulators/dolphin/bin/dolphin-emu and select controllers. In the middle of the dialog, you will select “Emulate the Wii’s Bluetooth Adapter” and for the Wii Remotes, select Real Wii Remote. You won’t be able to configure them, but that is ok. Also check Continuous Scanning and save. Restart the NUC and now it will work. To verify, start Dolphin again, and make sure that the Wiimote is connected to the Dolphin Bar, when the game starts, the Wiimote will rumble letting you know its connected.

    Also, Playstation and Playstation2 require BIOS’s to work.

    After installing all the Emulators I want, I then go back to the main menu and select Configuration / tools.

    I then configure Samba so that I can access my NUC’s ROM’s and am able to upload them using Samba. After it install Samba, select to Install Retropie Samba shares.

    And now you are all done. This is where I reboot the device.

    Now we are ready to setup the XBox One controller. First thing is to go to RetroPie Configuration in Emulation Station, and select Bluetooth. This will install the required Bluetooth libraries and binaries. Next, we need to SSH back into the box and make a setting change. XBox One controllers don’t use ERTM. Create a bluetooth.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/ and add the following line to the file:

    options bluetooth disable\_ertm=Y

    Reboot the NUC again. Now, go back in the RetroPie Configuration in Emulation Station, and select Bluetooth, set the Xbox Controller to be discoverable by turning it on, and holding the small button near the left bumper on top of the controller until the Xbox button flashes fast. Then in Emulation Station, select Search for controller. After a few moments it will be listed as Xbox Wireless Controller. Select it, and select the first option for connection and it will successfully connect. Back on the main screen in Emulation Station, press Enter or Start on another controller and select Configure Input. Select Yes and when it asks to press ‘A’ on a the controller, press A on the Xbox One Controller and you can configure it.

    These next steps are just to make the system pretty. I don’t log the default Linux Boot up text scrolling on my TV, so I use Herb Fargus’s Boot themes using Plymouth, and set it to the RetroPie PacMan default setting:

    sudo apt update
sudo apt install plymouth plymouth-themes plymouth-x11 -y
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com.com/HerbFargus/plymouth-themes.git tempthemes
sudo cp -r ~/tempthemes/. /usr/share/plymouth/themes/
rm -rf tempthemes
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/share/plymouth/themes/default.plymouth default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/retorpie-pacman/retropie-pacman.plymouth 10
sudo update-alternatives --set default.plymouth /usr/share/plymouth/themes/retropie-pacman/retropie-pacman.plymouth
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo cp /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.backup
sudo sed -i -e 's/GRUB_TIMEOUT=10/GRUB_TIMEOUT=2/g' /etc/default/grub
sudo sed -i -e 's/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="quiet splash"/g' /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub

    This piece hides the last login information before starting OpenBox:

    sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_lastlog.so/#session  optional pam_lastlog.so/g'/etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_motd.so motd=\/run\/motd.dynamic/#session optional pam_motd.so motd=\/run\/motd.dynamic/g' /etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_motd.so noupdate/#session optional pam_motd.so noupdate/g' /etc/pam.d/login
sudo sed -i -e 's/session optional pam_mail.so standard/#session optional pam_mail.so standard/g' /etc/pam.d/login

    And to hide the terminal in Emulation Station:

    sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ use-theme-colors false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ use-theme-transparency false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ default-show-menubar false' ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ foreground-color '#FFFFFF'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ background-color '#000000'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ cursor-blink-mode 'off'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i "1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ scrollbar-policy 'never'" ~/.bash_profile 
sed -i '1 i\dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.Terminal.Legacy.Profile:/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/:b1dcc9dd-5262-4d8d-a863-c897e6d979b9/ audible-bell false' ~/.bash_profile 
cp /etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
cp ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml ~/.config/openbox/rc.xmlbackup 
sed -i '//a ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a true ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a no ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a below ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a no ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a yes ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml 
sed -i '//a ' ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

    And lastly, if you want to suppress cloud-init, lets just remove it since we don’t need it:

    sudo apt purge cloud-init -y
sudo rm -rf /etc/cloud/
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/cloud/

    And you’re done. May need to do some tweaks with the graphics to get good performance. I found that running in 4k tends to slow the games and audio down to unplayable, but found that if I play in 1080 mode, they work better. Before the game starts and it asks you to press a button to configure when running retro-arch, hit A button and select the emulator resolution from the list. Find one that works the best for you.

    Happy Retro Gaming!

  • Manually Migrating VM’s from one KVM host to another

    Hello everyone! Been a while since I posted a blog. This one was a doozy. I tried to find this information online and there was a ton to peruse through. Luckily, I was able to peice a few of them together to finally get it working the way I needed for my environment.

    So, this is what I was doing. I needed to retire a KVM host, but it was running a couple of VM’s that I couldn’t migrate using virt-manger or with virsh migrate so I decided I would try to just move the qcow2 files and build them from new.

    That did not work at all.

    So, after researching some solutions, I finally have one that works, and I’m going to share it with you now.

    NOTE: I shared my public ssh keys between the hosts so I don’t need to type passwords in when ssh’ing and scp’ing between the hosts.

    First, power off the VM on the original host if it is running:

    virsh stop <vm name>

    Now, I had to chown the storage file since I don’t enable root on any of my systems and I needed to scp the file from one host to the new host:

    sudo chown wililupy:wililupy server.qcow2

    I could then scp it to the server where I keep my vm storage.

    NOTE: The path for the storage of my VM’s is the same on both hosts, if it is different for you, you are going to have to make some modifications to the xml file that is part of the next step.

    scp server.qcow2 host2:/data/vms

    I then ssh into the new host and chown the file back to root:root.

    Back on the first host machine, I execute:

    virsh dumpxml server > ~/server.xml

    I then change to root using sudo and copy the NVRAM file for my host since I use UEFI for my VM’s:

    sudo -s
cd /var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram
cp server_VARS.fd ~wililupy
exit
cd ~
sudo chown wililupy:wililupy server_VARS.fd

    I then scp’d the server_VARS.fd and the server.xml files to the new host:

    scp server_VARS.fd server.xml host2:~

    I then ssh’d to the new host and perform the following:

    virsh define server.xml
sudo chown root:root server_VARS.fd
sudo mv server_VARS.fd /var/lib/libvirt/qemu/nvram

    I was then able to start my VM’s on my new host and everything worked perfectly.

    virsh start server

    NOTE: My new host and old host had the same network and storage for the VM paths the same, which made this integration much easier. If yours are different, you will have to modify the xml file to match your new hosts information otherwise network will not work or the VM won’t find the storage correctly.

    Leave me a comment if this helps or you need some pointers!

  • Setting up Unreal Tournament 2004 Game server on Ubuntu 16.04

    Hey everybody.

    Been a while since I wrote here. Figured I would write up a howto to setting up a Unreal Tournament 2004 server. I really love this game. It brings back tons of memories, playing this when I was in the Navy with my friends on the sub.

    My boys have some break time off from school, and they played a little bit back in the day, so I decided to spin up a server so that we could play. I looked for a way to do this online, and couldn’t find anything so I figured I would write something up, so here you go.

    So, the good thing is that because the game is pretty old now, over 13 years old now, it doesn’t really require a lot of CPU or memory or storage. I deployed a KVM with 2 cores and 4GB of RAM and 20GB storage server running Ubuntu 16.04.3, and got all the updates installed. I then spent the next few hours searching for the ut2004 dedicated server package. Never could find it. Luckily, I had a backup copy, which I have uploaded to this server so you can download it here. You’ll also need the patch, which you can download here.

    I created a directory for the game in /usr/local/games/UT2004 and extracted the .zip here:

    sudo unzip -d /usr/local/games/UT2004 dedicatedserver3339-bonuspack.zip

    Once that was complete, I then untarred the patch and had to manually install it, since it creates a directory called UT2004-Patch so I had to actually go into each directory and move the files into their respective directories in the UT2004 directory. Once that was complete, you now have a system capable of running Unreal Tournament 2004 server. However, I needed to do a couple more things.

    Next, you need to install libstdc++5 package. This is required so that Unreal can run. Run the following command to install libstdc++5:

    sudo apt install libstdc++5

    One, I decided to start the web admin. In the /usr/local/games/UT2004/System/UT2004.ini. Find the UWeb.Webserver section and modify it:

    [UWeb.WebServer]
Applications[0]=xWebAdmin.UTServerAdmin
ApplicationPaths[0]=/ServerAdmin
Applications[1]=xWebAdmin.UTImageServer
ApplicationPaths[1]=/images
bEnabled=True
ListenPort=80

    You can change the ListenPort to what ever you want, you just need to change bEnabled=False to True to enable it.

    Next, I decided that I wanted this to run as a service using SystemD instead of just running in the background with me logged in to the server. Below is my UT2004-Server.service file:

    [Unit]
Description=Unreal 2004 Dedicated Server
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=ut2004
WorkingDirectory=/usr/local/games/UT2004/System
ExecStart=/usr/local/games/UT2004/System/ucc-bin-linux-amd64 server CTF-BridgeOfFate?game=XGame.xCTFGame?AdminName=admin?AdminPassword=XXXXXXXX ini=UT2004.ini log=server.log -nohomedir
Restart=on-abort

    Just change the ?AdminPassword= to what you want I then copied the file into /lib/systemd/system and chmod 644 and chown root:root the ut2004-server.service file and now I can control the service with systemctl:

    systemctl start ut2004-server.service and I can get status with systemctl status ut2004-server.service

    One last thing I did as well is I included my cdkey from my game since I was getting errors about a missing cdkey, however, I have tested it, and it is not required. The game will still run, you just can’t advertise your server on the Internet and host Internet games without it, which means your stats also won’t work. You used to be able to download a CD-Key from Epic, but that service is no longer working. I emailed them about this on December 2, 2017 with no reply as to date.

    Happy gaming!

  • Converting and Resizing KVM Hard Drives

    Hello everyone! I have been rebuilding my network and servers due to a major outage that I had with my ISP, which we are still meddling with. However, during the outage, I had to rebuild my servers. So I lost a lot of my build machines. Luckily, I still had copies running on my Mac running VMware Fusion. However, I don’t run on there so my machines just sit powered down, but if I need to bring them up for anything, I can.

    Well, I have a build machine that was running out there before I brought it into my KVM environment, but it was out of hard drive space and under utilized. This blog post is going to show how I moved the hard drive to my kvm server and then how I resized it and got it up and running.

    First thing I did was scp the vmdk file from my Mac to my KVM server:

    scp ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Precise-build.vmwarevm/Virtual\ Disk.vmdk kvm2:/data/VMS/precise-build.vmdk

    After 40 minutes, the vmdk was copied. I then converted it to qcow2:

    qemu-img convert -O qcow2 precise-build.vmdk precise-build.qcow2

    After that finished, I was able to get info on it:

    qemu-img info precise-build.qcow2
image: precise-build.qcow2
file format: qcow2
virtual size: 80G (85899345920 bytes)
disk size: 73G
cluster_size: 65536
Format specific information:
    compat: 1.1
    lazy refcounts: false
    refcount bits: 16
    corrupt: false

    I wanted to grow it to 200GB in size:

    qemu-img resize precise-build.qcow2 +120G

    I then got info on it to verify that it grew:

    qemu-image info precise-build.qcow2
image: precise-build.qcow2
file format: qcow2
virtual size: 200G (214748364800 bytes)
disk size: 75G
cluster_size: 65536
Format specific information:
    compat: 1.1
    lazy refcounts: false
    refcount bits: 16
    corrupt: false

    I was now ready to build the VM, which I used Virtual-Manager to build. I told it to use an existing disk, and then set it up to use more memory and processors then previously so I could get better performance out of it. I then told it to boot from a CD image of Parted-Magic so I could grow the file system. Luckily, this server only had two partitions, the root partition at the swap partition. However, the swap was on an extended partition and at the end of the disk. So I had to delete it and the extended partition so I could used parted to extend the file system. I extended it to the end minus 6GB, and then created at extended partition at the end and added a swap partition back and then saved it and rebooted. The machine rebooted, ran fsck and started up normally.

    I was then able to delete the vmdk file from my server to reclaim the 73GB of space it was using:

    rm /data/VMS/precise-build.vmdk

    Thats it. I hope this guide helps you migrating VM’s and growing their file systems from VMware or even Virtual Box to KVM.

    Let me know in the comments.

    Thanks!

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