GUI on 7" Eleduino Touchscreen and Raspberry Pi 3

Help and Support
1

I have a 7" Eleduino Touchscreen (1024x600) and have installed the latest Volumio version (2.806) onto a Raspberry Pi 3. Before accessing the volumio web page, I made some changes to the /boot/config.txt file as defined by Eleduino. Now when booting I can see the prompts and login on that screen. So, so far, I know that the display itself it working.

Previously I had installed the latest RPi OS onto the same RPi3 and made those config.txt changes, so I know that the display works as does the touch aspect of the display.

After doing the basic set up using the volumio webpage I have things working correctly. For now I am just using the audio output jack on the RPi3. Later - assuming I get things working correctly - I will add a DAC board to the RPi3.

I installed the plugin for the Raspberry Pi touchscreen and that said it was successful. But upon activating that plug in I got the message “Touch display: error connecting to X Server”. I tried both “xserver start” and “startx” but neither was successful in starting up the GUI.

Then I saw the post from Christian (Dec’17) that talked about a grey screen with a mouse pointer. Thanks to whoever created the “Your topic is similar to…” screen!

I followed his example by manually typing in the “apt-get” and “wget” commands. After completing these commands (and a reboot) I was able to get a grey screen and mouse pointer after typing in “startx”. The mouse even moves around by touching the screen. But that’s all I get.

What other things need to be set here for the Volumio GUI to appear on the display?

I know that there are some settings to automatically log into the volumio account and to set up some aspects of the X Server, but after trying one set from a posting by jazzstang which modified the rc.local file, the X Server doesn’t start automatically and if I type “startx” as I had done before, I still just get a grey screen and a mouse cursor.

Thanks in advance…

Rick

2

I suspect chromium-browser has not been installed properly. In the past this has been the case due to a certificate problem on the server where the chromium-browser package is downloaded from. But that has been resolved and should not be the issue now. There have also been problems to download from certain countries (e.g. China) which block some internet traffic… Could this have happened in your case, too?

Apart from that: The chromium-browser version that should have been installed by the plugin is 56.0.2924.84. If you followed the steps described in this post you will likely have version 48.0.2564.82.

To investigate further please post the results of
chromium-browser -version
systemctl status -l volumio-kiosk.service
and
ls -al /tmp/.X11-unix

Changes to rc.local are not required to run the touch display plugin. I would recommend to revert them.

Did you install any other display related software like light-dm?

3

Thank you for the reply.

I agree that based on the post I used, I should probably be running 48.0.2564.82 since that string was in the path used for installation. However, I can’t verify that since the ‘chromium-browser -version’ command could not be found - which in and of itself might indicate a problem. Did a ‘find’ for that command and it came back empty.

Here’s the output from the ‘systemctl status -l volumio-kiosk.service’ command:

● volumio-kiosk.service - Volumio Kiosk
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/volumio-kiosk.service; disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2020-08-15 16:52:45 UTC; 24min ago
Main PID: 1350 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Aug 15 16:52:30 volumio2 startx[1350]: at http://wiki.x.org
Aug 15 16:52:30 volumio2 startx[1350]: for help.
Aug 15 16:52:30 volumio2 startx[1350]: (EE) Please also check the log file at “/home/volumio/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log” for additional information.
Aug 15 16:52:30 volumio2 startx[1350]: (EE)
Aug 15 16:52:30 volumio2 startx[1350]: (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
Aug 15 16:52:45 volumio2 startx[1350]: xinit: giving up
Aug 15 16:52:45 volumio2 startx[1350]: xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
Aug 15 16:52:45 volumio2 startx[1350]: xinit: server error
Aug 15 16:52:45 volumio2 systemd[1]: volumio-kiosk.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Aug 15 16:52:45 volumio2 systemd[1]: Unit volumio-kiosk.service entered failed state.

And here’s the output of the ‘ls -al /tmp/.X11-unix’ command:

drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 40 Aug 15 16:52 .
drwxrwxrwt 11 root root 400 Aug 15 16:52 …

I backed out the changes to the /etc/rc.local file.

I did not install any other display software. I saw references to light-dm, but did not follow them through and install them.

I am anxious to see how the RPi3 performs with Volumio and the GUI on a single machine. If it is too sluggish I will consider getting an RPi4. Has the current Volumio software been tested on the RPi4, and if so, will I need to go through this same process to enable the Eleduino display on that?

Looking forward to your reply.

Rick

4

Your findings verify my assumption that chromium-browser has not been installed (properly). You could either try uninstalling and reinstalling the touch display plugin or try just executing sudo apt-get -y install chromium-browser and check if that suffices.

If you take last route you will be able to directly watch a download error possibly occurirng. If you decide to un-/reinstall the plugin you can watch the log using a second SSH connection and running sudo journalctl -f.

That’s good :slight_smile:

IMHO RPi3 is fast enough, but YMMV :wink: Volumio works on RPi4, too. Installation process for the display will be the same as for RPi3.

5

gvolt, thank you for the quick reply.

I used the ‘sudo apt-get -y install chromium-browser’ command (which I thought I ran yesterday while trying thing and it failed), but this time it seemed to go through to completion. I have a log of all that, but since it succeeded, I will not post it here (too long).

Now I at least get results from ‘chromium-browser -version’ which are:

volumio@volumio2:~$ chromium-browser -version
/usr/bin/chromium-browser: line 138: lsb_release: command not found
/usr/bin/chromium-browser: line 139: lsb_release: command not found
Chromium 56.0.2924.84 Built on Ubuntu 14.04, running on

which seems what it was you were hoping for.

The results of the ‘systemctl status -l volumio-kiosk.service’ command are now:

volumio@volumio2:~$ systemctl status -l volumio-kiosk.service
● volumio-kiosk.service - Volumio Kiosk
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/volumio-kiosk.service; disabled)
Active: inactive (dead)

Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: (EE)
Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: (EE)
Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: at http://wiki.x.org
Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: for help.
Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: (EE) Please also check the log file at “/home/volumio/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log” for additional information.
Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: (EE)
Aug 15 17:45:52 volumio2 startx[1360]: (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
Aug 15 17:46:07 volumio2 startx[1360]: XIO: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server “:0”
Aug 15 17:46:07 volumio2 startx[1360]: after 7 requests (7 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

which shows (I think) that the kiosk service is loaded but inactive. Correct?

The ‘ls -al /tmp/.X11-unix’ command yields:

volumio@volumio2:~$ ls -al /tmp/.X11-unix
total 0
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 60 Aug 15 17:46 .
drwxrwxrwt 13 root root 480 Aug 15 17:46 …
srwxrwxrwx 1 volumio volumio 0 Aug 15 17:46 X0

which is different from before and hopefully what is expected.

Now since it looks like the X system is installed as well as the kiosk service, what do I need to do to get the Volumio GUI showing on my display? When I type in ‘startx’ I get the same grey screen and mouse cursor (which does follow my touch on the screen). But no Volumio GUI.

Logging in from my PC I can see the Volumio GUI and checking the touchscreen plugin, it shows as installed and active.

What am I missing?

Rick

6

Enable the plugin. If it has been enabled while you installed chromium-browser restart the plugin.

7

So by “restart the plugin” do you mean turn it off so it shows “inactive” and then turning it back on?

If so, I did that (after restarting the RPi just in case) and I get that same error “Touch Display - error connecting to X Server”.

And I am assuming that I DO NOT need to go the console (on the Eleduino) and type in “startx” or anything else?

In the end, I want the RPi to autologin to volumio and the GUI to start without having to do anything since I don’t plan on having keyboard and mouse when it is in use.

Rick

8

Yes.

Exactly.

With the plugin enabled the GUI should be shown on your display automatically after Volumio has finished booting.

It could be not only chromium-browser did not get installed but other packages, too. So I would suggest to uninstall and reinstall the plugin.

9

Thank you! Uninstalled and then reinstalled the plugin and now it’s all working fine!

I appreciate your patience with this. Not sure why it was so difficult to get to this point, but it’s worth it!

So far the touch display is plenty responsive, so at this point I don’t think I’ll resort to getting an RPi4 - at least for this project!

Thanks again,

Rick

10

Great! :grinning:

I think it was just some packages failing to download on your first try to install the plugin. Thanks for staying the course!

P.S. If applicable mark this thread as solved.