How-To: ZSNES, fix for mcop error

[FranMichaels]

Alright, so you had ZSNES working fine, then upgraded to Gutsy, suddenly no go...

So you go to terminal and type zsnes, and you see some arcane message about mcop and being unable to create a link.

This takes care of it:
Just cut and paste this line into terminal, and hit enter.

mkdir -p $HOME/.kde/socket-$HOSTNAME && chown -hR $USER $HOME/.kde && chmod 755 -R $HOME/.kde

Special thanks to mastahkillah666 for more readable terminal commands

it will make the directory zsnes looks for, then makes sure it's owned by your username, and that its permissions match those of the home folder.

Another fix (probably the TRUE fix, but it requires superuser privilege)
Big thanks to Fibonacci for posting it, and mastahkillah666 for a great lesson in bash scripting.

sudo sh -c 'echo "default_driver=alsa" > /etc/libao.conf'

This one makes the single variable in libao.conf set to alsa, not that mysterious alsa9

How about that?

Happy emulating!

FYI: I've used both fixes in regard to testing, so you can use either fix or both without worry.

[rainontin]

Thanks, worked like a charm

[Fibonacci]

There is another way which has worked for me.
Search for the following line in /etc/libao.conf:

default_driver=something

And change it to:

default_driver=alsa

(make sure it says exactly "alsa" and not "alsa09" or something else). It appears that libAO tries to use aRts for sound (which, by the way, it shouldn't), causing strange errors when the aRts daemon is not running - that's the reason ZSNES works fine when a KDE application is running at the same time. This will force libAO to use ALSA instead.

[nuir]

It worked for me, thanx!

[Gatesuka]

Thank you very much Fran and Fibo

[libertas]

thanks a bunch

[VegaOmega]

I love this community... I don't think I've spent more than 15 minutes on any problem I've had since discarding the precious MS OS.
Thanks so much... SNES9X wasn't playing .smc files

[h-town]

Ok I have the exact same problem with zsnes, I entered sudo zsnes and got the same mcop directory thing that he had. Can someone explain to me how to do what fibbonaci says:

There is another way which has worked for me.
Search for the following line in /etc/libao.conf:
Code:

default_driver=something

And change it to:
Code:

default_driver=alsa

(make sure it says exactly "alsa" and not "alsa09" or something else). It appears that libAO tries to use aRts for sound (which, by the way, it shouldn't), causing strange errors when the aRts daemon is not running - that's the reason ZSNES works fine when a KDE application is running at the same time. This will force libAO to use ALSA instead.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

[|Jasp|]

Thanks for the fix!!

h-town:
I do not know about the method you are asking. However, I may be able to help clarify the original fix. After all, it did take me a few tries to get it right.

After you open Terminal and type "zsnes" and get the error, notice the message you receive says something like: "not able to create directory.../home/"something"/.kde/socket-"something"

Well, after the error shows up, type: mkdir /home/"something"/.kde/socket-"something"

Notice - you mkdir the exact same file path that terminal could not create.

Then copy the other two lines character for character and space for space.

Hope this helps!

[mastahkillah666]

There is a more 'elegant' solution to the problem 8) :

Instead of creating a directory, we will create a link of the socket to the /tmp directory and pointing it to null by typing in a terminal :

lnusertemp socket >/dev/null

You can also create such "links" not only for kde resource sockets, but also for its resource cache (lnusertemp cache >/dev/null) and its tmp (lnusertemp tmp >/dev/null).

Hope it 'helps' (even if the problem is indeed resolved with mkdir) .