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Any progress in this thread for figuring out how to get emulationStation to boot on startup?

If only I could get auto login to work in the terminal then I could just run the program from a .profile script.

There doesn't seem to be an /etc/inittab file on the system so I'm unsure on how to enable auto login. This is the latest xbian install with xbmc service disabled. On a side note, I tried to figure out a way to add emulationstation as a service but never got further than what this thread described.

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Well, for auto login this seems to work:

sudo nano /etc/init/tty1.conf

The very last line in this file should start with an exec command. Delete this line and replace it with the following:

exec /bin/login -f xbian < /dev/tty1 > /dev/tty1 2>&1

Now with the above change to auto login, and adding emulationstation into a .profile script it will run at startup now. I also included the modification to es_config.cfg as mentioned here http://blog.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/raspbian-retropie-xbmc/ by superkoal to allow any sh file to load from this menu. My sh file will start the xbmc service which is fine and then superstation will come back up. If you exit at this point the service is running in the background but you forever lost your direct screen output. I wonder what I could be missing? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

With this last step, I will have been able to setup RetroPie on startup and selectively start xbmc as well all from joystick selection using the emulationstation menu as my driver if someone can help me through this last hurdle.

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ok now with the following sh file executed from emulation station you quit emulationstation before running the service it works!!!:

#!/bin/bash
output=`ps aux|grep em\[u\]lationstation`
set -- $output
pid=$2

kill $pid
sleep 2
kill -9 $pid >/dev/null 2>&1
sleep 2

sudo service xbmc start

To clarify my self-replies and to help others trying to boot into emulationstation at startup, I didn't try creating a service with an emulation.conf in /etc/init/ as mentioned in start of thread; this is what I did:

1) xbian-config: turned off xbmc service auto start - from terminal services menu
2) sudo ./retropie_setup.sh
[3] SETUP : Under third option to configuring current install, Select [4] Start Emulation Station on boot

(Note, this will put the following entry:
entry in /etc/profile which will run after login. The script will also attempt 'sed /etc/inittab' to assist in enabling auto login, but my distribution did not have this file so this part fails leading to step 3)

3) Now emulationstation runs after login, but we want auto login as to not use any keyboard.
~ Now emulationstation will boot from startup. ~

+ Optional : launch xbmc from emulationstation
4) Edit emulationstation config to allow any sh to be run from /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/esconfig
~/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg
In the "Input Config" Section -> change command line so to load any sh file selected
COMMAND=%ROM%
+ Can change the path if you'd like, for clarity I changed the Start.sh to InputConfig.sh and the description to "Advanced Menu Loader"
5) create xbmc_load.sh with xbian owner and executable permissions with the following

(Note: The above script will shutdown emulationstation before running the xbmc service so that emulationstation will not override the screen control leaving you with a running xbmc service instance you can't see.)

Fully navigate your game collection and launch xbmc all driven from your joystick gamepad. Hope this helps.

In want this option in xbian-config...
;(