Steam runtime crashing

Hi Folks,
Steam run-time is crashing and not launching anything at the moment. It appears to be a problem with the builtin steam updater, and I’ve noticed in the past that when a steam update is available it can cause a launched game application to freeze/become unresponsive… even zombie.
Here’s the output from ‘DEBUGGER=gdb steam’

Starting program: /home/spongebob/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/usr/lib/libthread_db.so.1".
WARNING: setlocale('en_US.UTF-8') failed, using locale: 'C'. International characters may not work.
**[2021-01-04 00:10:52] Startup - updater built Oct 28 2020 23:34:22**
**ILocalize::AddFile() failed to load file "public/steambootstrapper_english.txt".**
**Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1608507519)**
**SteamUpdateUI: An X Error occurred**
**X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)**
^C
Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
0xf7fcedf9 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
(gdb) k

If I perform a ‘steam --reset’, it happily rebuilds the pins (Vulkan related I believe, a mystery apparently), but otherwise it’s still broken. Anyone got a suggestion besides uninstall steam or that it might fix itself in time?

Many thanks

M

Something may have been corrupted in the user directory. I would start over fresh. First, backup ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/ then delete ~/.local/share/Steam/. Fire up Steam, login, exit then restore the backup.

Thanks for the prompt reply, I’m trying that now.

Still not working, I get the prompt ‘Couldn’t find steam content…’, I click to reinstall, and it hangs again with the same error when I delve:

 [spongebob@krabbypatty ~]$ DEBUGGER=gdb steam
Setting up Steam content in /home/spongebob/.local/share/Steam
Running Steam on manjarolinux 20.2 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Pins potentially out-of-date, rebuilding...
Can't find 'steam-runtime-check-requirements', continuing anyway
gdb -x spongebob.steam.gdb.AIud --args /home/spongebob/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam
GNU gdb (GDB) 10.1
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Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-pc-linux-gnu".
Type "show configuration" for configuration details.
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For help, type "help".
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Reading symbols from /home/spongebob/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam...
(No debugging symbols found in /home/spongebob/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam)
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/spongebob/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/usr/lib/libthread_db.so.1".
WARNING: setlocale('en_US.UTF-8') failed, using locale: 'C'. International characters may not work.
[2021-01-04 02:01:42] Startup - updater built Oct 28 2020 23:34:22
ILocalize::AddFile() failed to load file "public/steambootstrapper_english.txt".
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0)
SteamUpdateUI: An X Error occurred
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)

Could the localization barf be causing this issue, which begs the question why so suddenly, and why the change to strict US requirement.

Thanks all the same

M

PS

Changing locale makes no difference, just a shorter error summary so that poo-poo’s my suspicion.

Starting program: /home/spongebob/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam 
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/usr/lib/libthread_db.so.1".
[2021-01-04 02:34:38] Startup - updater built Oct 28 2020 23:34:22
ILocalize::AddFile() failed to load file "public/steambootstrapper_english.txt".
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0)
SteamUpdateUI: An X Error occurred
X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
^C
Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
0xf7fcedf9 in __kernel_vsyscall ()

In order for GDB output to be useful, you’d have to build Steam without stripping the binary.

I’d like to see the full log just running steam without GDB. It spits out quite a lot, so using a pastebin service and linking here would be best.

Hi Yochanan, Thanks again for your assistance, I kind of guessed the lack of debugging symbols wasn’t helpful. I’ll have a go at doing as you ask. The first obstacle for me is working out how to build a manjaro package with a modified PKGBUILD, I’ve tinkered with AUR packages before, but never anything from the main official repo’s. Hopefully I’ll be back soon.

The steam-manjaro PKGBUILD is here. All you have to do is add options=(!strip) to it anywhere above the prepare() function.

Thanks, I didn’t know where the mainstream packages were kept, and Google can be less than helpful nowadays.

Hi Yochanan,
I’ve followed your instructions, and pasted the terminal/shell output here:

It seems the steam binary is prebuilt as a stripped binary, or at least with no debugging symbols, it is downloaded from the steampowered repository in that state… albeit in a nested compressed file. Which possibly raises the question (assuming I’m right) how do steam expect linux people to fix any problems they encounter if the binary is giving nothing away.

I’ve just found this which appears to be the solution:


Which confirms my belief, all binary files are prestripped/lacking debugging symbols to reduce their size. Nice one Valve.

I’ll have a crack at this tomorrow unless you have any better suggestions.

Thanks Yochanan for all your helpful hints and suggestions.

I managed to get some meaningful/verbose debugging hints from Steam last night:

The problem was with my video drivers/Open GL. To preface this can I explain that I’ve been running Manjaro for 6+years seamlessly, without any problems whatsoever. By accident I discovered that my NV drivers weren’t being seen by MHWD (altho’ startx was clearly doing something, I have an NV gpu and no graphics on my CPU: old AMD Athlon X4 760K). MHWD couldn’t see my NV drivers nor ‘install’ them, it was complaining about an un-resolvable dependency loop. To straighten out the situation I manually uninstalled some old leftover NV drivers, upgraded from kernel 4.14 LTS to 5.4 LTS and used MHWD to ‘install’ the new NV 5.4 drivers, and now everything is OK and Steam etc etc are all back in good order.

Thanks again for your time and patience, much appreciated