Batocera v39 - My Experience Upgrading

#batocera #emulation
In this video I talk about my experience upgrading Batocera 38 to Batocera 39 on my main gaming PC.
I also discuss the importance of backing up your /userdata folder and why I think it is a good idea going forward to always have it stored somewhere as a reference point.

[@jokerbrazil1]

It messed up my pinball visual setup when I updated it and gave me a lot of discouragement when I went to test the games. Thank you for the information that it is possible to maintain the folder structure. I will test again

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

I do really like the v39 folder structure and will switch over to it...eventually. Just being kinda lazy about it at the moment and still using the structure where all the pinmame stuff is under /userdata/system/configs/vpinball/pinmame.

[@claudiodiaz9752]

Last time I updated, it was fro. 35 to 37, because of the lightgun support. It required some tweaking to get some stuff that broke to work again. I don't personally see a reason for me to update, and after hearing so many horror stories, I'm avoiding 39 like the plague.

[@floriankipping]

I have set up a new system. Batocera 39 has made a very good impression (so far) ...on the SBCs of the Raspberry family. On my PC it remains at version 38. Why cause a running system to wobble?

[@leelee7334]

I wish I saw this sooner. I had the Vita game issue and I'm rebuilding from scratch. Now, I get errors running Model 2.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

That's why in like every other Batocera video that I make I try to stress the importance of backing up /userdata. Probably the best thing any Batocera enthusiast can do. I've made so many changes to my system that there is no way I'll remember what they are or how to do them if I ever need to start over. Every time they release a new version, my brain says, "don't do it, everything is working fine." But of course, I can't leave well enough alone. The Vita thing sucked because it just ended up being the save location needed to be moved, in most cases, and the upgrade didn't handle that properly (it was supposed to). I think it's actually marked as fixed on the v40 beta change log. If you don't mind my asking, what errors are you seeing running Model 2?

[@nzonkagaming]

My issues began when I upgraded from 37 to 38. When I upgraded to 38, all of my games were running slow and laggy. I had the correct bios files with me. I tried so hard with all of the tweaking, and nothing fixed the problem. I re-installed version 37, and everything went back to normal.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Downgrading is always an option if the last version was working better for you. From what I've seen that problem is usually related to the change that was made to the automatic video resolution detection. In newer versions of Batocera the resolution will be set to whatever the maximum resolution is of the display device you're using. Setting the resolution to something like "Max 1920x1080" under the developer options in the settings seems to fix it for most and reduces the lag. If you're playing on a 4K display and haven't adjusted that setting then yeah, I'd expect some performance impact with the emulators.

[@nzonkagaming]

@@eldermillennialvideogames I tried setting the resolution to “Max 1920x1080” and that still didn’t fix the problem. And I don’t really know how to adjust the display settings, either. Even if I knew how to do all of this better, I still don’t know if I can play my games perfectly on Batocera Version 38. I don’t trust it.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

That’s fair. As long as it is working the way you like that’s all that matters.

[@chumorgan443]

I had the same problem on my steamdeak. Changing resolution isn't enough on v38. You had to go into developer settings and set output to1080 otherwise it defaults to your TV resolution ( 4k) no matter what you do.

[@-Jamie]

No problems upgrading from 38 to 39 also got past fastboot you press 1 and choose always continue boot

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Glad everything went well with your upgrade. Most of my problems were just minor setbacks and my own stupidity. I think the Batocera team made previous updates too easy, so when this one actually made me do something, it threw me for a bit of a loop! I can't really complain about v39 now that it's up and running though.

[@KassieCBR600RR]

I had batocera v34. I was playing switch games, everything worked perfectly. Then I decided to update to v39. Now I can't launch my switch games from batocera menu. I have to press F1 go to application and launch switch games from there so I can play it. How do I fix it.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

I can't say for sure exactly what the problem might be, but if they are working from the F1 app menu and not from within EmulationStation, then you should investigate the es_launch* logs under /userdata/system/logs. The logs should have some indication of what is happening and why it isn't launching. wiki.batocera.org/troubleshooting

[@kylep1979]

I've had trouble getting golden tee 06 to work with a trackball on v38 and v39. It worked fine on v37. I can't find much information on this any help would be much appreciated.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Honestly, thanks for the reminder. I've been wanting to mess around with Golden Tee and keep forgetting whenever I have time. Might take a little while for me to locate a trackball and have time to test it out. In the meantime, maybe someone else will see this with more experience with that game.

[@DannoTuber]

If the trackball is not working in the game at all, I would first suggest going into Game Options (usually is long-pressing "B" button), then select Advanced Game Options, and scroll down toward the bottom and make sure that the Enable Mouse option is set to "Enabled".

[@dimitrinelson3639]

I tried updating from 38 to 39 and it started a boot loop. I honestly just wanna go back to 38 on my pc but I’m confused on if I were to plug it in to windows ,do I just save the batocera.config and delete everything else and use mirror or? I just want to boot into batocera

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Ah my favorite breakfast cereal...Boot Loops. Sorry, I had to make a bad joke. If you wanna go back to 38, just plug Batocera into your Windows PC and follow the steps at wiki.batocera.org/upgrade_manually. There is a section on doing an upgrade/downgrade manually from a downloaded boot.tar.xz file. Basically you can download the v38 boot.tar.xz and extract it onto the boot partition of your Batocera drive. Always be sure to do a backup prior to any upgrades in the future, since anything can happen. I periodically back up my /userdata folder to another machine on my network just in case. That way if the worst does happen, I can just install Batocera from scratch, throw my userdata folder on it, and I'm good to go.

[@DannoTuber]

Ugh - sorry you ran into the different problems when upgrading. I encountered the 'not enough space' issue when upgrading to V37, and found info at the Batocera Wiki that helped. Older versions installed with a smaller partition, and more space was required at some point along the way (I think it bumped from 6 GB to 8 GB). I did a clean install, and restored my Userdata files from a backup (which I also highly recommend doing regularly) and the next upgrade to V38 went fine. I'd also suggest using the batocera-upgrade command as opposed to the GUI upgrade option. I added a 2nd HDD to the Batocera PC and regularly use the Backup option (available in the ES menus) whenever I make a change like adding / configuring / scraping a new game. One word of caution: If you have any external drives mapped via the batocera-boot.conf file, make sure you unmount the drive(s) first before starting the backup, because all files on that remote share will get backed up if you don't. (I made a request to the Batocera team to exclude external shares from the Backup utility, but so far it hasn't been done). For the first time in...ever, I am thinking of passing on the upgrade to V39 and waiting. The main enhancement I was expecting in V39 was Pixelcade DMD (via ZeDMD) support for Visual Pinball, but the code wasn't quite implemented fully.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

That's pretty solid advice. I typically just use rsync to backup my /userdata folder to my NAS (except for the roms). I really should check out the Backup option at some point as I've never used it personally. The biggest problem was probably the "not enough space on /boot", which I knew exactly how to fix once I realized the size of the uncompressed update. I just really need to stop myself from doing any disk partitioning in the wee hours of the morning. It only leads to problems. You'd think I'd learn. I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping v39. For me, there isn't really anything that stands out as something I just had to have in this version. I mean, it's working great now, but I'm not really doing anything I couldn't do in v38.

[@losnamerales3403]

I'm just worried about if yuzu will still work and rpcs3 works, it gave me a message saying "unofficial system modification detected upgrading could break your system" will this mess up my yuzu, rpcs3 or something??

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

I didn't have any issues with rpcs3 after the upgrade. I'm pretty sure yuzu still worked as well for me, post upgrade. If yuzu does break, I've got another video on this channel for how to get the final version of it working again. You will have to move your PS2 bios files into the new location (/userdata/bios/ps2/) in order for those games to work after the v39 upgrade. If you're interested in upgrading, I'd just backup the /userdata folder somewhere safe and then do the upgrade, that way you can always install the older version of Batocera and put your userdata folder back if things don't go the way you want. Unless there is something you want that is in the new version though, you certainly don't have to upgrade. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as they say.

[@the_bogeyman.]

Mine doesn’t start anymore after update a build from v36 to v39. It worked perfect before, now it says ((0x1A) security policy violation. Idk what to do and guess I’ll just burn the img for the 3rd time.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

That sounds like SecureBoot. You could try disabling it in your BIOS if you haven't already. Some more advice on how to deal with it can be found here: wiki.batocera.org/secureboot

[@marcdee2911]

I just updated my batocera from v36 to v39, and now it’s not working anymore. I should have seen this comment before you updated my Batocera.

[@Stevil3113]

I updated from v38 to v39 everything seemingly went fine but none of my games will load. It kicks them all out. Only bios file that is missing is a ps2 one. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Have you tried different emulators/cores for the systems that are having this problem and they all do the same? What's in the es_launcher_stderr.log and es_launcher_stdout.log? Would need to see those logs after you try to start a game in order to diagnose. Looking at those would be my recommendation as a good place to start. More information about those logs and some general troubleshooting ideas can be found here: wiki.batocera.org/troubleshooting.

[@samgeisler641]

Same thing happened to me. I have no idea how to fix it. ALL emulators are doing this. Beyond frustrating. Can someone please help me here? Would pay someone for their time if they can walk me through how to fix this.

[@Stevil3113]

@@samgeisler641 I just ended up going back to v38 works great. Don’t see much reason to update anytime soon

[@fonzitheman]

I had no issue updating from within Batocera. Cause of the larger boot partition I did read if you updated from v38 to 39 you should be fine but Im pretty sure I went from 37,to 38,to 39..but I could be wrong,I did switch to a larger drive a while back and did a clean install so maybe it was v38 lol… cant remember. Anyway,with regards to not having enough space when updating from within the UI,cause it needs to download then unzip it. I think this would of worked: Download only the boot tar file for v39 from the Batocera repository. Once downloaded extract the boot files to a usb stick Start up your Batocera build,press F1 on keyboard ,plug the flash drive in a spare usb port (if its a diff PC) then copy/replace the boot files over on the boot partition. That way you are not downloading anything, you are just copying/replacing files. Other small issues I had. Im using mini speakers attacher via a USB port.Using ppsspp stand alone emulator the sound would revert to the mini PC internal speake Im using. What I had to do was go into the ppsspp emulator,audio setting and untick the 'use external audio devices' setting.Then it worked. Also,pcsx2 stand alone emu bezels arent showing for me. Tried diff decoration settings,disabled mango hud,still no go for now. Also I have a bunch of PC games installed,cause its using that glorius eggroll wine runner thing (lol) a handful of games have green wavey lines over it,tried enable/disable divx to vulcan,didnt help. I think v39 is handy if using on x86 64 mobile devices cause it now has TDP settings. Handy to save battery life. Tested on win600 and currently testing on steam deck.Though so far I havent noticed anything drastic when using lower settings. Didnt seem to effect PC or PS3 games but it did on PS2 games. As for 3DS I did read although citra is in v39 devs are not sure going forward as yet,but not cause of the legal/dead project reason. Its something else,the way updates work or something,not sure.Im no techie lol. So we'll have to wait and see,if they dont have it Im pretty sure heaps of people wont wanna update Batocera anymore.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

I ended up expanding the /boot partition from 6GB up to 10GB, so hopefully have future proofed it for a little while. You also make a very good point about TDP. I haven't gotten around to putting v39 on any of my mobile devices that support it so I hadn't thought about TDP really being a factor. For 3DS I don't really use the Citra standalone, just the libretro core. I like the right analog stick controlling the mouse on the second screen and being locked to that screen. So even if it is removed, in theory I should just be able to put it right back in myself. That's the plan I'm going with anyway for now.

[@fonzitheman]

@@eldermillennialvideogames Also noticed for 3DS there is no option to change emulator. So its only using stand alone citra. No Libretro core Citra option. Like you said happened on V39 for you. I checked the Batocera changelog for V39 and didnt see anything mentioning it was removed. 🤔 Maybe it was, dunno.

[@fonzitheman]

I did new flash of v39 on a spare micro sd card as a test build and tried on steam deck, no option to change 3DS emulator either. So I updated it v40 butterfly. Man, dont bother trying it yet, way to early, start isnt even bringing up system settings and select in system view doesnt bring up anything either, first I thought maybe do the button mapping but I cant, lol. Doesnt bring up any system setting option. So hold off on testing v40 for now lol

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

That's strange about Citra, but glad to know it wasn't just me. I could see them not wanting to include the standalone version going forward. But it's just weird to me that they'd drop the libretro version when I'm pretty sure it is still included in the nightlies over at the libretro buildbot. I'm going to have to be a little more hesitant with future upgrades because of all this. Actually try out the upgrades on a test or "dummy" machine before actually touching my main PC just to see what's missing. Thanks, Nintendo. They want to shut down all the rom sites out there, I say go nuts. It's the going after an emulator that really irks me about the whole thing. And the fact that now I can't play it all fast and loose with my Batocera updates. Oh don't worry. I only typically run the stable branch of Batocera. If I do decide to update to v40 while it is in beta, it'll be way late into the dev process...and probably on a spare machine.

[@fonzitheman]

@@eldermillennialvideogames Yeah, like i said, I only did that on a test micro sd card. I have a dedicated PC build, I never install beta versions on that. But its good to have a test build yeah. And if v40 stable doesnt have citra or libretro citra, dont think Ill update anymore. Would have to be something super duper special to warrant an update then.

[@abelesteve9881]

Just trying to update to v39 but from micro sd no from batocera as is not booting it comes in black

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Do you at least see the Batocera splash screen before it goes black? I wonder if it is booting properly just not outputting anything to the screen. Is it reachable on your network after a few minutes? What hardware specs are you running on? All I can think to suggest is: 1. Try disabling Secure Boot in your BIOS 2. Maybe look at batocera.conf on your installed system. If you've got any manual "es.resolution" settings, try commenting them out and let the system try to automatically detect the resolution. However, this should already be set to automatic if you just imaged v39 to the sd card and are trying to boot from that. You might also want to check the driver options in that file and make sure they are at sane values for your graphics hardware. Obligatory display issue help from the wiki: wiki.batocera.org/display_issues Might help you figure out what's going on by increasing verbosity during the boot: wiki.batocera.org/troubleshooting#verbose_boot My initial thought was that the installed boot partition might've been too small, but I know the updater in Batocera will detect this and throw an error (at least it did for me) and it also wouldn't be an issue for a freshly imaged v39 USB stick or sd card. If push comes to shove, you can always just revert back to v38 for the time being.

[@abelesteve9881]

Is on the steam deck i never saw splash batocera just a few letters and then black screen i guess you using the img in a different place as pc , etc

[@abelesteve9881]

i fixed, just download the v39 batocera and replace boot and config worked perfect

[@darbmann]

Thanks for the video! I am still running V38. My goal is to get switch working and need some advice on my issue. When I hit F1 at the loading screen and try to run Yuzu within the applications tab it tells me with a prompt "invalid desktop entry file: '/userdata/system/.local/share/applications/yuzu-config.desktop'. I understand I may be having multiple issues but any help would be appreciated!

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

What method did you use to install Yuzu? Does the Yuzu-config.desktop file exist at the location specified and what does its contents look like? I'm asking because "invalid desktop entry file" could mean a corrupt file, but it could be something else, too. You've made me think that I should probably make some notes and make a quick install method for Yuzu for the future in case I screw up my installation and need to put it back on quickly.

[@antoniofabozzi5086]

Update V39 duplicate boot options Hi, I have an installation of batocera which I am updating from version 36, I'm now on version 38. Knowing that there were problems with the boot partition being too small, when updating to version 39, I first made a backup of my hard disk where I installed batocera, then on this backup copy I tried to make all my experiments. I used gpatred live to enlarge the boot partition (the one in fat 32) to 10GB. I first reduced the Share partition on the right by 4 GB, then I moved the Share partition to the right and finally I enlarged the boot partition to 10 GB (6 which I already had + 4 which I subtracted from Share). Having read on some sites that reducing or increasing partitions with gparted can ruin the files, I deleted all the contents of the boot partition (fat 32) and copied the boot partition files I had from the original hard disk, i.e. the one with which I made the backup copy (I did this operation under Windows since fat 32 is visible on Windows). Then I started Batocera from the original hard disk (i.e. the one with which I made the backup copy) and I connected the other hard disk i.e. the backup copy which I enlarged the boot partition, via a sata/usb adapter, I I pressed f1 and from the batocera file manager I entered the hard disk connected via USB, I deleted all the userdata and copied it from the original hard disk. Now batocera starts but I noticed that from the bios boot menu it duplicates the name of the hard disk (I use Uefi as bios, I disabled the legacy options) like uefi: sandisk 3000 and under another identical entry. Then after two, three times that I restarted batocera the duplicate entry disappeared. Now I tried to update to v39 and it was successful but I noticed that from the bios boot menu I get the entry like uefi: sandisk 3000 and then under another entry saying Batocera. I was wondering if this is normal behavior in version 39 of this double entry in the boot menu. Thank you.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

I won't add much to this because I see you've gotten several responses to your Reddit thread on the same issue at www.reddit.com/r/batocera/comments/1cvqam6/update_v39_duplicate_boot_options/. Honestly, if it were me I wouldn't worry too much about it as long as: 1. Batocera boots correctly and reflects the version you expect 2. Everything within Batocera is functioning 3. The amount of available and used disk space looks normal from within Batocera If you are truly concerned you could always do a clean install of Batocera v39 and let it handle the disk partitioning. First you should backup your /userdata folder from your existing installation before doing the clean install so you can restore it later if you want. But again, I'm not sure I would put forth the effort if Batocera is working just fine other than having an extra entry in the boot menu.

[@antoniofabozzi5086]

Thanks, I think I'll do this, clean install version 39 and then copy my previously saved userdata folder. Thanks again for your availability.

[@Scavo63]

PS Vita, Nintendo64 DD, Sega Hikaru don't work after update.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

I can barely remember what I did to get psvita working as I remember it didn't work for me originally after upgrading either. I'd check the logs and see what they have to say after attempting to run it. If it just tries to start and immediately exits, the es_launch_stderr.log is a good place to start. Might want to check if Vita3k works from the F1 menu. For me it would work from there but not from ES. Other than that the vita3k.log should be helpful. Wish I could remember more details about my problem with it that I fixed. I should really start writing these things down. N64DD doesn't work for me using the default settings. I had to change the emulator to the libretro Mupen64Plus-Next and then it works. I can't speak for the Sega Hikaru as I don't emulate that one.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Oh right. The vita3k error I was seeing initially in the logs was it complaining about the "merge_directories" function in the vita3kGenerator python file. For the record I edited /usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages/configgen/generators/vita3k/vita3kGenerator.py and commented out the only line containing "merge_directories". There's also a thread here with a different solution involving moving some files: www.reddit.com/r/batocera/comments/1bc7ohs/batocera_v39_issues/ I'd probably give the solution in that Reddit link a shot first as it is the simplest and overall probably the better option.

[@leelee7334]

@@eldermillennialvideogames Vita seems to emulate worst since the upgrade.

[@Alexander-ix2jp]

Huh, is this a custom version? If so that could explain the issues.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

This is kind of an older video at this point, but I did have some customizations in place like the addition of Switch emulation prior to the upgrade. However the biggest issue was with the size of the boot partition, which as I understand it would've been a problem anyway requiring manual intervention whether or not I had any customizations in place. Then there was the psvita saves issue. I admittedly took the more convoluted route around that one, but it worked. I honestly can't remember what else I talked about in the video, but v39 has been working fine for me for a while now. I think for me, it was frustrating because previous upgrades had been so smooth that any bumps or ripples during this upgrade were just magnified because I'm used to them being so flawless. If anything that is a compliment to the entire Batocera team for the quality of their work. At the end of the day the issues gave me something to do and made me a little less bored for a little while, so I guess that was nice.

[@Alexander-ix2jp]

@@eldermillennialvideogames Thanks for explaining, makes more sense now. What about Steam (Flatpak) though, is it working again in Batocera 39 or is it still borked?

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Haven't tested Steam on Batocera in a long time. I've been using ChimeraOS for Steam and have been very pleased with it. I dual boot on my PC, so it's just a matter of picking which disk to boot from, depending on whether I want Steam or Batocera.

[@TheRealJPhillips]

I find myself choosing NOT to update at all. I've put PS3 and switch game shortcuts and such in the windows folder and I had to make metadata folder extensions for them when necessary. All that got deleted before and I had it perfect .

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

I can get behind the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach. Even though I have v39 installed and working just fine, I'm still hard pressed to find any new feature that is a game changer for me, personally. I'm sure there are others who feel differently depending on what and how they choose to play. For the most part, Batocera pretty much already does all the major things I want it to do about as well as I could expect.

[@nicolas.adenis-lamarre]

i note you use a custom version of batocera, not the official one. this is generally a source of issues when upgrading.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Not sure what you mean. It's the official version of Batocera, downloaded from Batocera.org or through the built-in updater. The biggest problem faced was the /boot partition space (even that wasn't too bad) and that was completely unrelated to any customizations I have on top of Batocera.

[@fonzitheman]

Nicolas is on the dev team. He says custom version cause you added switch. And when you update Batocera, since Switch isnt officially supported things can get easily messed up.

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Yeah. Shows how much attention I paid to the name when I responded. I 100% get that problems can be introduced when making modifications, so no argument there. Some of the problems I encountered with this upgrade were certainly self-inflicted. It's for that reason that I don't bug the dev team and tend to power through on my own. I've been on that end of it and definitely didn't have the time or patience to troubleshoot every little thing an end user may have done. I think for me, the use of "version" is what got me. The additions and changes I make to the installed version can put me into a bad state and "out of support", but it's still the same base software version to me. I guess it ends up being a tomato/tomato situation. Wow, that expression really doesn't work in text form at all.

[@fonzitheman]

@@eldermillennialvideogames I know the devs get plenty of 'Hey the update broke my build' when so many times its cause they've modded it in a certain way, like adding custom systems, cfg files and by using pre builds which is always a risk updating as you dont know who ever made it, what modifications they have done. Always best to make your own build, that way if something goes wrong you will at least have more of an idea on how to fix it. Yeah it can be 'very' time consuming ofcourse to get that build just right but well worth putting the time in 👍

[@eldermillennialvideogames]

Agreed. Especially about those pre builds. I see those all the time and God only knows what they've added in there. I always start with the official version as the base and make any changes I want on top of that, whenever I do a clean install. And I only run scripts and make changes that I understand and know what it's going to do or am at least willing to accept the risk of not knowing. But again, I'm not going to bother the devs with my problems. Not going to knock their work either. Even with my own personal frustrations with how the upgrade went on my system, at the end of the day, I'm still running Batocera and plan to for the foreseeable future.