Framebuffer error on a x86 arch linux install without X11

[thatsthat]

I have sucessfully gone through the installation on a Intel Core i5 box with Arch Linux without X11 ( I use it for Kodi with GBM ) but when I run Emulationstation, it prints the message 'ERROR: Could not get a framebuffer' repeatedly on screen and nothing else happens.

According to [this] (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=193516) there was no way of running EmulationStation without X11 on x86 architecture in 2015, do you know if this is till the case?

Thanks in advance

[V0rt3x667]

Hi, thanks for reporting the error. Unfortunately EmulationStation will not run using KMS on x86. I believe RetroPie get around this on the RaspberryPi by using a custom build of SDL2. You could try using Pegasus as an alternative frontend as this has builtin support for running using just KMS. I will see if anyone has a fork of EmulationStation with KMS support.

[V0rt3x667]

This forum artical confirms they use a custom build of SDL2: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/26477/how-does-emulationstation-go-around-the-need-from-drmsetmaster-drmdropmaster/2

I have not included the custom libraries in ArchyPie yet as I did not want to cause any conflicts with the versions of SDL supplied by ArchLinux. I will look into this further.

[V0rt3x667]

Hi, apologies for the delay getting back to you. The latest version of SDL2 2.30.9 appears to have fixed KMS/DRM detection issues. EmulationStation ran fine under a VM on VirtualBox. If you want to try rebuilding EmulationStation please prefix the setup script launch command with __has_kms=1
sudo __has_kms=1 ./archypie_setup.sh or sudo __has_kms=1 ./archypie_packages.sh emulationstation
Thanks

[V0rt3x667]

Hi, Attract-Mode also now works on x86 using KMS. You will need to update the ArchyPie script and then launch it via sudo __has_kms=1 ./archypie_setup.sh or sudo __has_kms=1 ./archypie_packages.sh attractmode