Attract-Mode Support Forum

Attract-Mode Support => General => Topic started by: Calvin on October 25, 2021, 11:09:24 AM

Title: Need Help compiling attractmode without x11
Post by: Calvin on October 25, 2021, 11:09:24 AM

Hi all,

this is my first time posting here. I hope this is the right place to ask such a question.

I am trying to run attractmode with no desktop environment. I started on a clean ubuntu-server image and then installed all the dependencies.

After running make

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USE_DRM=1 (also tried

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USE_GLES=1 in addition) the compile finishes with some warnings, but no errors.

Running

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attract now results in following error message:

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Failed to open X11 display; make sure the DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly
Thanks in advance!

Title: Re: Need Help compiling attractmode without x11
Post by: hermine.potter on October 25, 2021, 11:24:31 PM

It's a problem of your OS.
to start a graphical application, you need a display environment.
on Ubuntu Server, you can't start the attract gui (command attract).
See here (https://askubuntu.com/questions/53822/how-do-you-run-ubuntu-server-with-a-gui)
See minimal GUI (https://askubuntu.com/questions/53822/how-do-you-run-ubuntu-server-with-a-gui/788193#788193)

Title: Re: Need Help compiling attractmode without x11
Post by: Calvin on October 27, 2021, 10:06:48 AM

Hi, thank you for the answer.

I think I may have phrased my question wrong. But I got the solution for everyone that is also trying to achieve something similar.

I was trying to run attractmode directly from the console with no Desktop/GUI installed. This is possible with the latest attractmode thanks to DRM/KMS settings. You have to build the sources yourself with the USE_DRM flag. Check https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/master/Compile.md (https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/master/Compile.md) for instructions on how to compile.

This is, however, only one part as I found out you also have to build sfml-pi with DRM enabled (instructions for compiling: https://github.com/mickelson/sfml-pi (https://github.com/mickelson/sfml-pi)). Instead of the regular sfml. This lets you then start attractmode with no desktop insalled.

Together with retroarch (also DRM/no X11) this gives you a console like experience for dedicated arcade machines. (kinda like retropi).