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Just updated to 11.3, errors in BigBox


Kuro Houou

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Interesting, I have basically the same issue as @Kuro Houou, running over a NAS, but with standard Launchbox. It couldn't load the Launchbox theme (LBPlex) from the new core folder, so it hung for a bit then threw up an error basically saying the above, and loaded the default theme. I manually copied the files it was looking for into the core folder, that fixed the first issue, but then I tried to run a game and it didn't go anywhere - it was hitting the same issue trying to launch the game startup theme. So yeah, I just rolled back to 11.2. 

I'm not that technical, from reading the responses above, it appears as though there is (currently) no actual solution which will enable it to run (correctly) over a NAS without manually duplicating files or creating a sync. Sounds like your hand was forced, still a shame. I run it over NAS for the same reason as Kuro, I just double click the launchbox.exe from any computer on my network and boom! works a treat. Also great for end-to-end backups.  Hopefully someone can come up with some genius hack to make it work. Or not, and I'll just wallow in my own self pity. #firstworldproblem. Peace.

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54 minutes ago, matris said:

Interesting, I have basically the same issue as @Kuro Houou, running over a NAS, but with standard Launchbox. It couldn't load the Launchbox theme (LBPlex) from the new core folder, so it hung for a bit then threw up an error basically saying the above, and loaded the default theme. I manually copied the files it was looking for into the core folder, that fixed the first issue, but then I tried to run a game and it didn't go anywhere - it was hitting the same issue trying to launch the game startup theme. So yeah, I just rolled back to 11.2. 

I'm not that technical, from reading the responses above, it appears as though there is (currently) no actual solution which will enable it to run (correctly) over a NAS without manually duplicating files or creating a sync. Sounds like your hand was forced, still a shame. I run it over NAS for the same reason as Kuro, I just double click the launchbox.exe from any computer on my network and boom! works a treat. Also great for end-to-end backups.  Hopefully someone can come up with some genius hack to make it work. Or not, and I'll just wallow in my own self pity. #firstworldproblem. Peace.

Hey Matris, glad to hear I wasn't the only one running off a NAS ;)  But yeah, from everything I tried there was no fix, I couldn't create symlinks manually, and if I wanted to get it to work it would probably take up a lot more space as I would have to duplicate a lot of files between the lanuchbox dir an the core dir in order to get everything to work, its more then themes that require the symlinks, it looks like it creates links for other folders too like manuals, etc... 

So for me I just decided to follow Jason's advice and move all my Roms to another folder outside of launch box then use a syncing tool to copy/sync the whole LaunchBox dir to my 3 computers around the house.  I wish there were another way as LaunchBox itself is like 250 GB on my disks!!!  I hope they come up with a fix soon as I would like to run this on my NAS again eventually as LaunchBox will only grow in size probably,  I feel like old Themes should be updated by the creators or deprecated imo to help resolve this issue... but I am probably in the minority there.  I know hard decisions had to be made though and I have things working now like I said... just a big pain having all these sync jobs having to run and extra disk space wasted on 3 computers.

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Ack. That's annoying. As you said, Launchbox is quite large if you include everything but the ROMs. I don't have large HDDs (ssds) on my PCs because HDDs fail. That's what NAS is for. To handle the redundancy - efficiently, instead of using workarounds like the above.

I wonder if this is just so it can be compatible with Linux. Crazy that there's such a fundamental change with this release and the majority won't even know. I'm also surprised that network launching (eg from NAS) isn't supported, but Linux is. I actually thought it was.  Shows how much I know! Ie nothing. 

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Saw 11.4 just came out with this update... Fixed: Big Box stability issues with certain themes (introduced in 11.3)

Just wanted to let everyone know, it doesn't resolve the issue I have been talking about here   Was hopeful for a quick second.

Edited by Kuro Houou
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13 minutes ago, Kuro Houou said:

Saw 11.4 just came out with this update... Fixed: Big Box stability issues with certain themes (introduced in 11.3)

Just wanted to let everyone know, it doesn't resolve the issue I have been talking about here   Was hopefully for a quick second.

Yeah, I wish. Unfortunately there's no quick or easy solution for that (or really a solution at all, sadly).

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7 hours ago, Kuro Houou said:

Saw 11.4 just came out with this update... Fixed: Big Box stability issues with certain themes (introduced in 11.3)

Just wanted to let everyone know, it doesn't resolve the issue I have been talking about here   Was hopeful for a quick second.

Although not a direct solution, the link here we were discussing using symlink application to the image/video directories which is where LB can get large (independent of ROMs) if on space constrained local drive.  Maybe some well placed symlinks can cut down on syncing you have to do.  I have used the symlink utility to do SSD cache symlinks to speed things up. I keep my ROMs on my NAS with the LB install itself on a local drive. Even on a 10 gbit network connection I found it too laggy for data LB needed to access if on NAS (likely my Synology drives).

 

 

Edited by sundogak
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So I got to thinking after talking with Matris some, while Windows doesn't allow symlinking, my NAS itself should.  So I went into FreeNAS (my NAS) and ran the command,

ln -s /mnt/v01/Data/Emulators/LaunchBox/Themes /mnt/v01/Data/Emulators/LaunchBox/Core/Themes
 

This manually created the symlink for the Themes directory, although you would also have to do this for all the other directories that need symlinks like manuals, images, etc... (list below)

After I did this I launched BigBox from my NAS and sure enough, it WORKED!  The linked directories in the \LaunchBox\core folder were linked properly and had links to all the files as needed.

I literally just tested this so haven't even tried a game yet, but this looks like it may be a better work around!

 

List of directories you will need to manually create symlinks for on your NAS,

Images
LBThemes
Manuals
Music
PauseThemes
plugins
StartupThemes
Themes
ThirdParty
Videos

Edited by Kuro Houou
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Just a quick update

Ran a bunch of games from multiple platforms, no issues

Looked at some images, manuals, videos, no issues

 

Looks like this is the fix for me at least for now!  

As for performance, it runs pretty much just as fast for me on the NAS as it does locally.  Some people complain about slowness, but I think that might be when you first load it and it hasn't cached any images etc... Once you play it for awhile all that gets cached and seems to run very smooth.  Also might be the latest code/release updates speeding things up too.  Either way, IT RUNS GREAT ON A NAS!

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  • 3 weeks later...

@Jason Carr woot! You did it! 11.5 baby! Or...someone resolved it. Noting this in the changelog:

Improvement: Better theme compatibility for installs that don't support symbolic links (such as on network drives or external drives running the exFAT file system). Not all themes are supported in this scenario, but theme support should be much improved. 

What was the fix?

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4 hours ago, matris said:

@Jason Carr woot! You did it! 11.5 baby! Or...someone resolved it. Noting this in the changelog:

Improvement: Better theme compatibility for installs that don't support symbolic links (such as on network drives or external drives running the exFAT file system). Not all themes are supported in this scenario, but theme support should be much improved. 

What was the fix?

It's actually fairly disgusting unfortunately lol. We literally just copy the theme XAML files to the Core folder if the symlinks can't be created. It works though. ;)

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6 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

It's actually fairly disgusting unfortunately lol. We literally just copy the theme XAML files to the Core folder if the symlinks can't be created. It works though. ;)

lol, don't worry, I've seen much dirtier work arounds. But yeah, I did all my usual stuff, not a single issue. Thanks to team Launchbox for all your hard work. Cheers

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So 11.5 just came out with this...

- Improvement: Better theme compatibility for installs that don't support symbolic links (such as on network drives or external drives running the exFAT file system). Not all themes are supported in this scenario, but theme support should be much improved. We still do not recommend running LaunchBox or Big Box off of a network drive or an external drive with the exFAT file system.

 

So is this the fix ;)  I still have everything working fine with my manual simlinks.. just curious.

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On 9/16/2020 at 12:56 PM, Kuro Houou said:

So 11.5 just came out with this...

- Improvement: Better theme compatibility for installs that don't support symbolic links (such as on network drives or external drives running the exFAT file system). Not all themes are supported in this scenario, but theme support should be much improved. We still do not recommend running LaunchBox or Big Box off of a network drive or an external drive with the exFAT file system.

 

So is this the fix ;)  I still have everything working fine with my manual simlinks.. just curious.

Yes it is the fix.  Appears you didn't read the previous post haha?

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  • 1 year later...

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