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Installing MPF on Xubuntu/Lubuntu

Xubuntu is a Ubuntu-based linux distribution using the minimalist, yet still feature-packed, XFCE desktop manager. The focus of this guide will be for getting MPF up and running directly from power (unattended) for use in a production scenario.

1. Create Xubuntu/Lubuntu Installation Media

You will need:

  • 4GB USB Flash Drive or larger

Write the ISO (Win/Mac/Linux)

Use UNetbootin

  • Select LUbuntu or XUbuntu
  • Select your USB Stick

2. Install Xubuntu/Lubuntu

Boot from the installation media (you may need to change something in your BIOS to enable booting from USB). It should be a fairly straight-forward linux installation. When it asks about partioning, choose the "Guided - entire hard disk" option (unless you have a specific reason not to). You will be asked to create a user account. When doing so, it's important that you: DO NOT ELECT TO ENCRYPT THE HOME FOLDER. If you encrypt the home folder, the auto login will not work and will have to reinstall to fix.

3. Configure Xubuntu/Lubuntu

The system will reboot after installation. Login with your username and password then follow these steps:

  • Launch a Terminal emulator

  • Update the sources: sudo apt-get update

  • Upgrade all the things: sudo apt-get upgrade

  • Setup auto-login to the XFCE desktop

    * Create the file
    `/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/12-autologin.conf` and edit it
    to contain:

[Seat:*]
autologin-user=your_username
autologin-user-timeout=0

  • Be sure to change your_username to the username you created during installation.

  • Optional: Reduce the Network Timeout

    * You should do this if the system will not always be
    connected to the internet
* Edit the file
    `/etc/systemd/system/network-online.targets.wants/networking.service`
* Find the line `TimeoutStartSec=5min` and change to
    `TimeoutStartSec=10sec`

4. Install MPF

The existing Debian install script works perfectly on Ubuntu. The following commands will install the current versions of MPF and MPF-MC as well as each of their dependencies.

cd ~
wget https://github.com/missionpinball/mpf-debian-installer/archive/0.55.x.zip
unzip dev.zip
cd mpf-debian-installer-dev
sudo -H ./install
rm ~/dev.zip && rm -Rf ~/mpf-debian-installer-dev

If you want to make sure that MPF was installed, you can run:

mpf --version

This command can be run from anywhere and should produce output something like this:

username@host:~$ mpf --version
MPF v0.33.13

(Note that the actual version number of your MPF installation will be whatever version is the latest.)

5. Setup your Machine Config

  • Copy your machine config root folder to ~/ which is the same as /home/your_username/.

  • Create a new file named run.sh in /home/your_username/your_machine_folder/

    • Edit the file to contain:

      #!/bin/bash
xterm -e "cd /home/your_username/your_machine_folder && mpf both -c config"

  • Change your_username to the username you created during installation.

  • Change your_machine_folder to the name of your specific machine folder.
  • Change config part to reflect the name of your top-level config file in ~/your_machine_folder/config/.

6. Setup your Machine Config to Auto-execute

When XFCE is executed, it runs all the Desktop Entries found within ~/.config/autostart. We'll create one of our own to run the script we just added to our machine config.

  • Create the file ~/.config/autostart/mpf.desktop and edit it to contain:
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=MPF
Comment=Mission Pinball
Exec=/home/your_username/your_machine_folder/run.sh
Path=/home/your_username/your_machine_folder/
Terminal=false
Type=Application
  • Change your_username to the username you created during installation.
  • Change your_machine_folder to the name of your specific machine folder.

That's it. At this point, you should be able to reboot and watch the system auto-login to XFCE and then launch MPF using the script we added to your machine config.

Other Considerations

If using the SmartMatrix RGB DMD with this setup, you need to add the system user running your game to the dialout group.

sudo usermod -a -G dialout your_username

What if it did not work? ------------------------

In the following we list some common problems and solutions. If you got another problem please ask in our forum.

YAML error on first start

You will see this error if there is already a different version of ruamel.yaml installed on your system:

pkg_resources.VersionConflict: (ruamel.yaml 0.15.37 (c:\users\robert\appdata\local\programs\python\python36\lib\site-packages), Requirement.parse('ruamel.yaml<0.11,>=0.10')

This could have happened if you are upgrading to a newer version of MPF or you have incompatible versions of MPF, MPF-MC and/or the MPF-Monitor installed. The required ruamel.yaml version is different on newer MPF versions. We used to install ruamel 0.11 and switched to 0.15 in MPF 0.53+. MPF cannot start with two yaml libraries. To fix this check your versions pip3 list and check mpf, mpf-mc and mpf-monitor. Remove the wrong version and install the right one. All versions need to match (for instance all or all dev).

The following command will remove all three and install the latest release:

pip3 uninstall mpf mpf-mc mpf-monitor
pip3 install mpf mpf-mc mpf-monitor

This error can also occur if you already have ruamel.yaml installed in your python system packages for a non-MPF package. Often times, you will have a newer version of ruamel.yaml than MPF requires. Unfortunately, MPF cannot use a newer version of this package because that caused issues in the past because newer versions dropped support (wheels for windows) for older python versions. In the case that you need a different version than the one MPF requires, it is advised to create a python virtual environment and install the required packages there, and use that virtual environment for running MPF.

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