Troubleshooting Lakka

When problems arise during the operation of Lakka, it can be helpful for the developers and other volunteers to have certain standard information in order to find a solution. When requesting help with a Lakka issue, please try to include:

1. A description of the problem
2. The hardware that you are using
3. A system log recorded when the problem occurs (if possible) along with any other logs that are relevant
4. The name of the libretro core used
5. The version of Lakka you are using

Introduction to Lakka logs

The information found in Accessing the Lakka Command Line Interface can be very helpful during this process as well. The following procedures assume that the user has logged into Lakka via SSH.

Lakka system logs

Option A: Copying from the terminal window

1. Restart the retroarch service in 'verbose' mode with this command: systemctl stop retroarch.service ; retroarch -v.
2. Keep the terminal window open. After the service restarts, the system log will begin appearing in the window where it can be copy-pasted to another location.

Option B: Creating a log file

1. Restart the retroarch service in 'verbose' mode with this command: systemctl stop retroarch.service ; LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose retroarch --menu --verbose >> log.txt 2>&1.
2. The file log.txt is now stored in the home directory. You can now copy the log file off of the Lakka system via an SCP file transfer.

Graphic card logs

lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 VGA will give information about your graphic card.

Audio device logs

aplay -L enumerates audio devices which have been detected by Lakka.

Input device logs

lsusb lists all devices attached via USB

dmesg displays all messages from the kernel ring buffer which typically is holding the messages generated by Lakka's Linux kernel from the boot process. The dmesg log lists each hardware device that the kernel detected along with information on how the device was configured by the system.

Saving logs

If you are unable to copy-paste the output, e.g. you have access only to the local terminal and you cannot read ext4 (/storage, LAKKA_DISK) partition on your system, you can redirect the output of the logs to the FAT32 (/flash, LAKKA) partition. You only have to remount the partition into read-write mode:

mount -o remount,rw /flash

Then to save the logs to this partition, just redirect the output to a file on this partition, i.e. replace the redirection from:

command --parameter > log.txt 2>&1
                      ^^^^^^^

to:

command --parameter > /flash/log.txt 2>&1
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The logs will be saved on the FAT32 partition, so you can easily get to them when you plug in your USB thumb drive / SD card to your computer.