The esde and retroarch app profiles (both CATALOG dict copies) mounted
three subdirectories individually:
{games}/retroarch/cores:/home/retro/.config/retroarch/cores:rw
{games}/retroarch/shaders:/home/retro/.config/retroarch/shaders:rw
{games}/retroarch/overlays:/home/retro/.config/retroarch/overlays:rw
but never mounted /home/retro/.config/retroarch itself. Docker
auto-creates that missing parent directory inside the container as
root:root mode 755 (standard behavior for a bind-mount target that
doesn't already exist in the image) — the retro user (uid 1000) can
read/traverse it but not write into it. RetroArch's own entrypoint
then fails outright trying to write its default config there:
cp: cannot create regular file '/home/retro/.config/retroarch/retroarch.cfg': Permission denied
which happens on every single launch, for both apps — confirmed live
against a real box: the container starts, RetroArch dies on that cp
within ~1s, and Wolf tears the session down (the "black screen, back
to app grid" symptom, with nothing RetroArch-specific about it).
Fix: mount the parent {games}/retroarch directory itself onto
/home/retro/.config/retroarch instead of three separate subdirectory
mounts. cores/shaders/overlays already lived as the only subdirectories
under {games}/retroarch/ on the host, so this preserves the exact same
container-side paths — but now the parent is a real bind mount with no
auto-created stub in the way, and RetroArch's other generated config
(button remaps, core options, playlists, cheats, etc.) persists across
sessions too, which the old three-mount setup silently discarded.
Claude
76a494bcbf