[setup] Steam download pop-up appears

[LukeShortCloud]

KDE Plasma 6 defaults to the Wayland display server instead of Xorg. We want to move to this anyways. One problem this has is that we can no longer start a hidden background session of Steam during the first-time setup. That is used to automatically download the required bootstrap files for the Steam Gamescope session to work.

Related: https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/winesapOS/issues/742 Related: https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/winesapOS/issues/751 Related: https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/winesapOS/issues/782

[LukeShortCloud]

We are hiding the Steam download pop-up today by using a feature of X11 to run a detached display (via a detached tmux session so it does not log output to the first-time setup log file).

steam_bootstrap() {
    if [[ -f /usr/bin/steam ]]; then
        tmux new-session -d -s steam 'xvfb-run --auto-servernum steam'
    fi
}

steam_bootstrap

https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/winesapOS/blob/a8f638e96aca8e3758ae797ce1a3ee1b23fef2cd/scripts/winesapos-setup.sh#L124

[LukeShortCloud]

Red Hat has been working on a Wayland replacement for xvfb-run called xwfb-run.

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2023-November/043329.html

[LukeShortCloud]

xwfb-run is provided by the xwayland-run project.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ofourdan/xwayland-run/-/blob/main/src/xwfb-run.py?ref_type=heads https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xwayland-run-git

[LukeShortCloud]

I did a quick test. Notes so far:

• The AUR xwayland-run-git package also needs the optional weston dependency installed.
• The --auto-servernum argument is available for backwards compatibility with scripts but it is a no-operation as it is not needed on Wayland.
• Running xwfb-run steam from a terminal emulator works.
• Running tmux new-session -d -s steam 'xwfb-run --error-file /tmp/compositor.log steam does not work.
  • The error (EE) failed to read Wayland events: Broken pipe appears in the compositor error log.
  • Inheriting the environment variables does not help.

    env -0 >/tmp/env
    tmux new-session -d -s steam "modify_env /tmp/env && xwfb-run --error-file /tmp/compositor.log steam'"

https://tmux-users.narkive.com/6iQNRK60/need-tmux-to-inherit-and-pass-on-environment-to-a-subshell

[LukeShortCloud]

Oddly enough, I found the only reliable way to get it working is by redirecting at least the standard error from the steam command. We might as well redirect standard output, too.

tmux new-session -d -s steam 'xwfb-run steam &> /tmp/steam.log'

[LukeShortCloud]

I opened up an upstream bug report regarding the need for standard error redirection: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ofourdan/xwayland-run/-/issues/7