Steam client not displaying library after update

[steve7233]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): September 10, 2021, at 1:00:50
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Kubuntu 20.10
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] sometimes but not now.
• Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] yes.

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Describe what you expected should happen and what did happen. Please link any large code pastes as a Github Gist I applied the latest steam update and now I can't see my library in the regular mode. The small mode will display them and the big picture mode will display them however chat, game discussion forms, and web view doesn't work. I submitted a ticket and steam support told me to post here.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Apply the latest update.
2. Let steam restart
3. No library

[kisak-valve]

Hello @steve7233, if you completely close Steam, then run steam from a terminal, does the terminal spew give any hints? Also, please copy ~/.local/share/Steam/logs/steamwebhelper.log to a gist and share a link or attach the log as a file.

It should be noted that upstream support for (K)Ubuntu 20.10 has ended, but you're most likely seeing one of the issues mentioned at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/7935#issuecomment-916937681.

[kisak-valve]

The 2021-09-13 has some fixes in it that may help. Please update your Steam client and retest.

[supernovajm]

I am having the same issue in Kubuntu 20.04 after fully updating. If I run steam from terminal, it displays just fine. Only has the problem when launching from a shortcut menu or the application menu. If i edit the application menu launcher to launch from terminal, that also works fine

steamwebhelper.log https://gist.github.com/supernovajm/1ddedbc09c5e44761f11ab0fc6e807e8

[kisak-valve]

Hello @steve7233, @supernovajm, please copy your system information from Steam (Steam -> Help -> System Information) and put it in a gist, then include a link to the gist in this issue report. The detail I'm curious about is if you're using an Optimus-capable laptop and if you are, what GPU X is running on.

[supernovajm]

Hello @steve7233, @supernovajm, please copy your system information from Steam (Steam -> Help -> System Information) and put it in a gist, then include a link to the gist in this issue report. The detail I'm curious about is if you're using an Optimus-capable laptop and if you are, what GPU X is running on.

Mine is a desktop, but here is the gist as requested

https://gist.github.com/supernovajm/7ace271e57f84b20bb7411f443bbfedb

[kisak-valve]

Thanks, that eliminates my guess that you were seeing something similar to #8074. Since you have a Ryzen 5, there's no secondary GPU for that snafu to occur.

Reiterating from that issue report, there's not many things that would be different between starting Steam from a desktop shortcut and the terminal. Maybe there'd be a hint if you compare the environment variables between the working client and the misbehaving desktop shortcut? If you have htop installed, in it you can navigate to the Steam process and press e to get a list of the process's environment variables.

[supernovajm]

Thanks, that eliminates my guess that you were seeing something similar to #8074. Since you have a Ryzen 5, there's no secondary GPU for that snafu to occur.

Reiterating from that issue report, there's not many things that would be different between starting Steam from a desktop shortcut and the terminal. Maybe there'd be a hint if you compare the environment variables between the working client and the misbehaving desktop shortcut? If you have htop installed, in it you can navigate to the Steam process and press e to get a list of the process's environment variables.

That didn't reveal to me any different environment variables of significance, but strangely after opening ~/.local/share/applications/steam.desktop in vim, and then re-saving it without making changes, it seems to be working now.

Edit: false alarm, still having trouble

[dreamcat4]

I seem to remember experiencing this problem a few months earlier. And having to do 'something' to fix it. OK then. Am on ubuntu 21.04 here, and I took the advice in these comment above. To check using htop and pressing e. To get the list of env vars. It was mostly the same. However there was a variable STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES which was =0 in the cmdline launch. But =1 from the .desktop file GUI / freedesktop launch.

And indeed... looking in my ~/.local/share/applications/steam.desktop i can see now there was a modification made into all of the Exec= launcher lines. Which isn't in the default /usr/share/applications/steam.desktop. Why is this there? Well to fix the previous breakage we had to manually consifgure that. And now it doesn't work.

Yet launching steam from cmdline works, the browser works and verything fine. But when i edited my steam.desktop file and changed it to =0 (like is the env var in shell, which also is a custom override)... Well that didn't work. And gives an error

You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run:
libXtst.so.6
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
libpipewire-0.3.so.0
libvdpau.so.1

Fatal error couldnt load steamui.so. So that didn't help.

Looking on cmdline launching steam the log lines says:

θ77° [id:~/.steam/steam/userdata/315039430/config] $ steam
Running Steam on ubuntu 21.04 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Steam runtime environment up-to-date!
STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0 is deprecated, and no longer has an effect.
Steam client's requirements are satisfied
WARNING: Using default/fallback debugger launch
/home/id/.steam/debian-installation/ubuntu12_32/steam -nominidumps -nobreakpad

it would be great if we could get anwhere closer so i did a locate on some of the missin .so dlls. And found them in 2 primary folders:

/home/id/.steam/debian-installation/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpipewire-0.3.so.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpipewire-0.3.so.0

So clearly, when being launched as a freedesktop.org .desktop file, then LD_LIBRARY_PATH is missing either of the above 2 folders.

However steam.sh should be figuring that out automatically for us or something? Well i updated the the latest beta version and it doesn't seem to be working. At least ATM. Did not try rebooting or logging out / logging back in. But might try that later today.

BTW here is also a relevant stack overflow page. Although did not try doing that yet either https://askubuntu.com/questions/260813/trying-to-install-steam-error-you-are-missing-the-following-32-bit-libraries-a

[dreamcat4]

also i have to wonder... whether those libraries are actually supposed to be 32-bit ones. Or they are in fact 64-bits. Because the error message said You are missing the following 32-bit libraries. But the folder where they exist seems to be named */usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/

... which would usually be meant for 64-bit libs, right? Sorry I only just noticed that. A little weird IMHO. Or maybe just completely innocuus and nothing actually to do with this issue IDK

[dreamcat4]

It browser pages started working after rebooting the machine. So clearly there was something related to the system environment that hadn't taken for the running desktop login session.... whatever it was no idea. Because the steam.sh script with all it's code paths is rather a mess at this point. But what would have been nice would have been to edit the steam.sh and have it write everything to a log file with set -x at the top of the script. Then compare those 2. As unfortunately on my PC no log file was in the suggested location. Should have done that before rebooting i guess. Oh well! (sorry about that)

[supernovajm]

I thought just setting the application icon to run in a terminal was going to be a decent workaround, until I tried to launch a game from SteamVR and realized that it apparently breaks steam application handler. If I delete ~/.local/share/applications/steam.desktop per https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/260 then the steam launch commands work again (even without restarting steam), but that means the next time I launch steam, the library won't display again.

[edward-shen]

Edit: looks like I ended up in the wrong issue thread; For anyone searching consider #8069 as well, as this seems to be the root cause for my instance.

---

Can verify this issue still occurs on Arch Linux with the Sept 23 2021 14:35:28 beta build with same behavior (fine from terminal, black screen from launcher).

Maybe there'd be a hint if you compare the environment variables between the working client and the misbehaving desktop shortcut?

I compared the environment variables of steam.sh between the two and were unable to find a significant difference (left is CLI, right is launcher):

3d2
< COLORTERM=truecolor
6d4
< CSF_DrawPluginDefaults=/usr/share/opencascade/resources/DrawResources
7a6
> CSF_DrawPluginDefaults=/usr/share/opencascade/resources/DrawResources
9c8
< _P9K_TTY=/dev/pts/1
---
> _P9K_TTY=/dev/tty1
46c45
< SHLVL=2
---
> SHLVL=1
59c58
< PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/default/bin:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl:/home/edward/.cargo/bin:/home/edward/.yarn/bin:/home/edward/bin:/home/edward/.cargo/bin:/home/edward/.yarn/bin:/home/edward/bin
---
> PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/lib/jvm/default/bin:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl:/home/edward/.cargo/bin:/home/edward/.yarn/bin:/home/edward/bin
61d59
< ALACRITTY_LOG=/tmp/Alacritty-1954914.log

Notably, it looks like a steam instance and the children steamwebhelper processes are failing to start when launching from the launcher:

CLI: Launcher:

But I'm not sure where to debug this.

For completeness sake, here's the console log when running steam from a terminal gist, but I doubt this would be helpful.