Commodore VIC20 Install scripts

pineson · February 4, 2026, 12:20pm

I am writing a script for adding the VIC20 game JetPac, using VICE Commodore emulator. The running the script the the install is OK, hitting a few issues running the game.

Log from running the game.

– GAME LOG –
Started initial process 13340 from gamemoderun /home/user/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic -chdir /home/user/Software/VIC20 -VICdsize -sdl2renderer opengl /home/user/Software/VIC20/Jetpac.prg
Start monitoring process.
/home/user/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic: error while loading shared libraries: libreadline.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Monitored process exited.
Initial process has exited (return code: 32512)
All processes have quit
Exit with return code 32512

There is the missing library, but first I’ll go through a couple of other observations first.

There is no option (a game option?) to config the memory size, to emulated adding RAM Cartridges. This game does require adding memory expansion (option is “-memory 8k”)
VICE does not have an “-sdl2renderer” option. There is “-sdl2backend” (VICE Manual - 8 Platform-specific features), though I see the default Ubuntu package is not built with it, unless Lutris has it’s own build that enables SDL.
Finally, the missing libraries, first was libreadline.so.6, for a workaround around for now I put in a link to a later version.

$ cd ~/.local/share/lutris/runtime/Ubuntu-18.04-x86_64
$ ln -s libreadline.so.7 libreadline.so.6

And re-running the game gave the error;

– GAME LOG –
Started initial process 2529 from gamemoderun /home/user/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic -chdir /home/user/Software/VIC20 -VICdsize -sdl2renderer software /home/user/Software/VIC20/Jetpac.prg
Start monitoring process.
/home/user/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic: error while loading shared libraries: libFLAC.so.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Monitored process exited.
Initial process has exited (return code: 32512)

I put in a link to a later version in my KUbuntu install

$ cd ~/.local/share/lutris/runtime/Ubuntu-18.04-x86_64
$ ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libFLAC.so.14.0.0 libFLAC.so.8

Which then gives the error;

– GAME LOG –
Started initial process 2624 from gamemoderun /home/user/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic -chdir /home/user/Software/VIC20 -VICdsize -sdl2renderer software /home/user/Software/VIC20/Jetpac.prg
Start monitoring process.
Monitored process exited.
Initial process has exited (return code: 132)

As this point I am not too sure if the error is due to the invalid “-sdl2renderer” parameter or could be due to a lib mismatch.

I am running Lutris version 0.5.19, OS is KUbuntu 25.10 running in a Virtual Box VM (version 7.2.4 r170995).

pineson · March 9, 2026, 2:08pm

Retried with version 0.5.22, same error. Will anyone be looking into errors, or shall I fork the code and fix it myself?

pineson · July 20, 2026, 4:01pm

Well I’m back, I have to say I’m disappointed with the lack of replies. Anyway, I have been playing about and have a few questions.

Looking at buildbot (buildbot/runners/vice/build.sh at master · lutris/buildbot · GitHub) then there is an attempt to build the SDL2 version (though due to a typo it builds GTK3 instead), I was wondering what the technical reason for the SDL2 version, as the Vice devs say that it is currently experimental (https://sourceforge.net/p/vice-emu/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/vice/doc/readmes/Readme-SDL2.txt).
What is the planned for required libraries (by the Vice emulator) that are missing in the base linux runtime? Is it planned to include them in the runner tar, or add them to the base linux runtime, or is there another plan for them?
Talking of the base linux runtime, I see it is Ubuntu 18.04 which is starting to age now. Are there any plans to update to a later version?

Poke · July 20, 2026, 5:41pm

Have you tried to run the emulator command outside Lutris from a command line?

pineson · July 21, 2026, 3:18pm

Yep, failing as well;

~/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/peter/.local/share
/lutris/runtime/Ubuntu-18.04-x86_64 
~/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin$ ./xvic -chdir /home/peter/Software/VIC20 -VICds
ize -sdl2renderer software /home/peter/Software/VIC20/Jetpac.prg 
Illegal instruction (core dumped) 
~/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin$ echo $? 
132

I am currently using a snap install of the vice emulator (version 3.9) and that works OK.

Back to the Vice runner then I have a runner created using the build bot (GTK3 type), currently looking at the runner for charges required to the emulator arguments.

Poke · July 21, 2026, 5:24pm

Try to run the command ldd ~/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic, this will list the libraries required by the binary. If any are missing, include the path of those in LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Btw., the maintainers of the VICE project are providing official SDL2 builds, so SDL2 is probably not related to your issue, unless SDL2 is not available.

pineson · July 24, 2026, 12:10pm

I have created a new environment, this is ldd from a clean environment that I have not been fiddling around in. In the environment with the error I did add all missing libs, though it could be something I’ve done to cause that error.

Though it is probably worth waiting a while, I think the list of libs in the latest is different.

I do have one suggestion concerning the runners, perhaps add a file (readme, yaml or json) containing some build details (such as runner build date, version of the runner app etc) just to help with support and identication of what is being run.

$ ldd ~/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic
        linux-vdso.so.1 (0x0000775e6d1ac000)
        libpulse-simple.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpulse-simple.so.0 (0x0000775e6d184000)
        libpulse.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpulse.so.0 (0x0000775e6d133000)
        libasound.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2 (0x0000775e6d014000)
        libjpeg.so.8 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so.8 (0x0000775e6cf7d000)
        libgif.so.7 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgif.so.7 (0x0000775e6cf71000)
        libpng12.so.0 => not found
        libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x0000775e6cf51000)
        libdl.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x0000775e6cf4c000)
        libreadline.so.6 => not found
        libFLAC.so.8 => not found
        libvorbisenc.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvorbisenc.so.2 (0x0000775e6ce9f000)
        libvorbisfile.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvorbisfile.so.3 (0x0000775e6ce94000)
        libvorbis.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvorbis.so.0 (0x0000775e6ce65000)
        libogg.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libogg.so.0 (0x0000775e6ce5b000)
        libSDL2-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libSDL2-2.0.so.0 (0x0000775e6cc75000)
        libmpg123.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmpg123.so.0 (0x0000775e6cc16000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x0000775e6c800000)
        libm.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x0000775e6caee000)
        libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x0000775e6c400000)
        libpulsecommon-17.0.so => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pulseaudio/libpulsecommon-17.0.so (0x0000775e6c782000)
        libdbus-1.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3 (0x0000775e6c732000)
        /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x0000775e6d1ae000)
        libmvec.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmvec.so.1 (0x0000775e6c637000)
        libsamplerate.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsamplerate.so.0 (0x0000775e6c291000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 (0x0000775e6c14f000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXext.so.6 (0x0000775e6cad8000)
        libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXcursor.so.1 (0x0000775e6cacb000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXi.so.6 (0x0000775e6cab5000)
        libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXfixes.so.3 (0x0000775e6caad000)
        libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrandr.so.2 (0x0000775e6caa0000)
        libXss.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXss.so.1 (0x0000775e6c632000)
        libdrm.so.2 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdrm.so.2 (0x0000775e6c138000)
        libgbm.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgbm.so.1 (0x0000775e6c62b000)
        libwayland-egl.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwayland-egl.so.1 (0x0000775e6c624000)
        libwayland-client.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwayland-client.so.0 (0x0000775e6c125000)
        libwayland-cursor.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libwayland-cursor.so.0 (0x0000775e6c11b000)
        libxkbcommon.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxkbcommon.so.0 (0x0000775e6c0bc000)
        libdecor-0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdecor-0.so.0 (0x0000775e6c0b1000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x0000775e6c083000)
        libsndfile.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsndfile.so.1 (0x0000775e6bff3000)
        libX11-xcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11-xcb.so.1 (0x0000775e6bfee000)
        libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1 (0x0000775e6bfc3000)
        libsystemd.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so.0 (0x0000775e6beaf000)
        libasyncns.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libasyncns.so.0 (0x0000775e6bea5000)
        libapparmor.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapparmor.so.1 (0x0000775e6be8f000)
        libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXrender.so.1 (0x0000775e6be83000)
        libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x0000775e6be56000)
        libffi.so.8 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.8 (0x0000775e6be45000)
        libFLAC.so.14 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libFLAC.so.14 (0x0000775e6bddf000)
        libopus.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libopus.so.0 (0x0000775e6b800000)
        libmp3lame.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmp3lame.so.0 (0x0000775e6bd90000)
        libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXau.so.6 (0x0000775e6bd8a000)
        libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x0000775e6bd82000)

pineson · July 24, 2026, 12:39pm

Yep, I agree SDL2 is probably not the cause. It’s more from a situation where I have a verson of vice that works, taking step by step approach to solving the issues.

I was asking about the SDL2 as on the download page as it does recommend using GTK, plus there is the other comment about there SDL2 build is experimemtal. To me there is a risk there, though I guess the team considers it acceptable, I was wondering wha the technical reason for using SDL2 was.

Anyway I will probably go a bit quiet over the coming days/week as I do a bit more investigation.

Poke · July 24, 2026, 5:50pm

As you can see from the output of ldd, the following libraries are missing: libpng12.so.0 libreadline.so.6 libFLAC.so.8 and all of those libraries are obsolete on *buntu 25.10 / 26.04. So, either a newer version of the runner is required or you will need to build and install the old libraries on your system, which is not recommended due to security issues.

You may have luck linking to the newer libraries, like this (check available library versions first):

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
sudo ln -s libpng16.so libpng12.so.0
sudo ln -s libreadline.so.8 libreadline.so.6
sudo ln -s libFLAC.so libFLAC.so.8

There is no guarante that it works, though.

EDIT: If you have a working version of vice, why do you not make a link from the broken Lutris vice runner to the working vice runner, so Lutris uses the working version instead?

pineson · July 30, 2026, 2:25pm

Well, I’ve had some success. Probably worth noting that I am currently building/testing the Vice emulator in Ubuntu 26.04 (KDE Desktop). I’m just starting to build with the buildbot and also plan a quick test with an earlier Ubuntu version, and probably a different desktop as well (probably gnome).

Below are changes I have performed so far to get me up and running.

Buildbot

First changes to the build of the Vice emulator.

Correct SDL2 argument in https://github.com/lutris/buildbot/blob/master/runners/vice/build.sh, the argument should be --enable-sdl2ui (the 2 is in a different position).
Again in https://github.com/lutris/buildbot/blob/master/runners/vice/build.sh I added “xa65 libsdl2-image-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev” to the list of dependancies to install. Though I do wonder if libsdl2-image-dev should be the list of libs in buildbot/setup-buildbot.sh at master · lutris/buildbot · GitHub.
In buildbot/setup-buildbot.sh at master · lutris/buildbot · GitHub added “subversion dos2unix” to the list of tools to install.
In buildbot/setup-buildbot.sh at master · lutris/buildbot · GitHub updated the version of deb-multimedia-keyring to 2024.9.1 (url https://www.deb-multimedia.org/pool/main/d/deb-multimedia-keyring/deb-multimedia-keyring_2024.9.1_all.deb). The previous has now been moved to archive servers so that step currently fails.

Vice Runner

Next changes to the the runner itself to up and running.

First an example of a working command;

Started initial process 37425 from gamemoderun /home/peter/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/bin/xvic -chdir /home/peter/Games/jetpac -directory /home/peter/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/share/vice -memory 8k -VICdsize -sdl2backend opengl /home/peter/Games/jetpac/Jetpac.prg

The changes I’ve made so far are just to lutris/lutris/runners/vice.py at master · lutris/lutris · GitHub, that are;

Correct SDL2 rendering argument from “-sdl2renderer” to “-sdl2backend”, the values are the same.
The BIOS/System files were not being picked up, fixed by adding “-directory” argument pointing to ~/.local/share/lutris/runners/vice/share/vice. I do wonder if it good to add as a parameter on the runner config.
The VIC20 had an option to add RAM expansion cartridges. The game I’m testing, Jetpac, does require an 8K RAM cartridge (yes 8K, how times have changed!). So that is the “-memory 8K” argument added. Probably good to add as a parameter on the runner config, it does need to change for different games.