Switch to Raspbian Desktop in Retropie and Back Again

Raspberry Pi Desktop Kit

We have been really impressed with the Raspberry Pi Desktop Kit from Element14. Too equally looking actually cool, it has a number of great features that make it platonic for numerous unlike applications. We've already had i set upwardly equally a media server, and they also brand neat NAS drives. Yet, we thought that it would also make a terrific little gaming desktop, so we fix nearly creating one using RetroPie.

Setting Up RetroPie

The start footstep in setting upwardly RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi Desktop is to burn the latest RetroPie image to a micro SD card. To practice this, download the RetroPie image from the RetroPie web site, and follow the instructions on the RetroPie installation instructions page. Make sure that you download the correct paradigm, as there are different downloads depending on which model of Raspberry Pi yous are using. For our setup, we used the Pi 3.

Once the RetroPie image has been copied to the micro SD card, the card should be inserted into the SD menu slot of the Raspberry Pi. At this phase, you lot will not demand any of the Raspberry Pi desktop kit parts; we will ready that up later. So, you should just have your Raspberry Pi connected to a monitor, USB keyboard and mouse, and a power supply connected. You lot will likewise need your chosen game controller connected to one of the USB ports. When yous power up the Pi, RetroPie should boot up. Every bit part of the boot procedure, yous will be prompted to set up your game controller past pressing the appropriate buttons on the controller.

Updating RetroPie

Before going much further, it is worth updating RetroPie in order to ensure that everything is as up to engagement as possible. To practise this, become to the RetroPie configuration page, and select 'RetroPie Setup'. From this page, select 'Update all installed packages', and when prompted to update all the underlying OS packages, select 'Yes'. Depending on how contempo your installed version of RetroPie is, this update process may take some time to consummate.

Installing Pixel Desktop

RetroPie is built on top of the Raspbian operating organization. Even so, to go along it every bit lightweight as possible, it is built on the lite version of Raspbian. As such, it does non include the Pixel desktop.

In order to carry out some of the setup required for the Raspberry Pi Desktop kit, it will be necessary to install the Pixel desktop. To install the Pixel desktop, go to the RetroPie configuration page and again select 'RetroPie Setup'. This time, nevertheless, select 'Configuration/Tools' from the setup menu. From the displayed options bill of fare select 'Raspbian related tools', then select 'Install Pixel Desktop environment'. As with updating RetroPie, this process will accept some time to complete.

We recommend that once the Pixel desktop installation is consummate your Raspberry Pi should be rebooted.

Install Pi Desktop Kit Software

Having installed the Pixel desktop, it is now time to install the software that is required to control the Pi Desktop kit. In order to do this, you will need to sew together the Pixel desktop. This is done past selecting 'Pixel Desktop' from the RetroPie 'Ports' menu.

Once in the Pixel desktop, you will demand to open up a terminal window, and enter the following commands to upgrade all installed software packages to the latest versions:

sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade

Having done this, use the spider web browser to open up the Element14 Pi Desktop web page, and download the Pi Desktop Debian image file. The downloaded aught file will need to exist extracted to a file with the extension .deb (for example, pidesktop-base-1.ane.0.deb). Having extracted the file, open a terminal window and change your current working directory (using the cd command) to the folder into which the Debian file has been extracted. The software packet can so be installed using the command:

sudo dpkg -i pidesktop-base-1.ane.0.deb

Pi Desktop Hardware

Once the Pi Desktop software has been installed, the Pi Desktop kit hardware can exist fix every bit described in the Pi Desktop kit user manual.

One of the smashing features of the Pi Desktop kit is that you can, if y'all and then desire, add together an internal mSATA Solid State Drive (SSD). This will provide y'all with masses of extra storage infinite, giving y'all the option of installing all the games you could peradventure wish for. Additionally, the internal SSD can be fix either equally a boot device or simply as a storage device. For our build, nosotros made use of a 250GB mSATA SSD.

In club to use the SSD as a boot device, it will be necessary to carry out a one-time programming operation on your Raspberry Pi to enable the boot from USB feature. The procedure for doing this is described in the Pi Desktop kit user manual. We have besides covered this process in one of our previous web log posts. Notation that the kick from USB performance is only possible using a Pi 3.

Copying Software to SSD

One time the basics of RetroPie have been gear up, and the hardware build is completed, the software installed on the SD carte du jour can be copied to the SSD. For our purposes, we are going to take our SSD as a boot device. This ways that the SD will be removed from the Raspberry Pi once we have copied the software across to the SSD.

Create Partition Table on SSD

In guild to copy the files across from the SD carte du jour to the SSD, it is get-go necessary to create a partition table on the SSD. To do this, you lot volition need to install another software package called gparted. This will need to be done by again running upwardly the Pixel desktop, and executing the following terminal commands:

sudo apt update sudo apt install gparted

Having installed gparted, the following terminal command will run the gparted application to allow the partition table to be created:

sudo gparted

The gparted application initially displays the following screen:

From this screen, selecting the SSD device from the dropdown list will brandish the post-obit screen:

To create the required partition table on the SSD, select 'Device', 'Create Partition Table'. The post-obit screen volition exist displayed:

From this screen select 'gpt' equally the required partition table type, and printing the 'Apply' button to consummate the performance.

Copy Information From SD to SSD

The concluding step in setting upwardly RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi desktop kit is to re-create the contents of the SD carte to the SSD installed on the expansion board. However, the way that the data is copied over is important, since it is essential to ensure that any references to file volumes are maintained correctly. For instance, there will be references in the /boot/cmdline.txt boot file to the UUID (the unique identifier) of the boot partition. For this reason, the SSD must have the aforementioned UUID equally the SD card in gild for the Raspberry Pi to successfully kick from the SSD. The easiest fashion to effectively clone the contents of the SD card (including the UUID) to the SSD is by ways of the dd command. Use the following terminal command to duplicate the contents of the SD card to the SSD:

sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda bs=1M

This command will take some time to complete. However, once complete it should be possible to shutdown the Raspberry Pi, remove the SD card and then reboot the Raspberry Pi from the SSD.

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Source: https://www.makerspace-uk.co.uk/retropie-on-raspberry-pi-desktop-kit/

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