Crash when launching Steam

[ToadKing]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): 1671236931
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Steam suddenly has stopped launching for me. It crashes so hard it doesn't look like it uploads any crash dumps even. The crash seems to be somewhere in the audio code so possibly related to #8926 and #8940? Using Pipewire 0.3.63 with no audio playing or recording when launching Steam.

Terminal: https://gist.github.com/ToadKing/23948dbba27e8dd43cbb71dd56066990 Backtrace: https://gist.github.com/ToadKing/7f97e40dc6a3f59558e0b8f380c72462 Minidump: https://toadking.com/core.steam.1000.1235ab73b6f44fffa2d624e358264a1f.71543.1672603234000000.zst (too big to upload to GitHub)

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Launch Steam
2. Crash

[TTimo]

Please provide a complete steam runtime system info (Steam -> Help -> System Information)

The backtrace suggests you are using scout's libpulse, try to install 32 bit libpulse on your host and see if that fixes it?

[ToadKing]

Huh, when I tried again this morning Steam now launches without crashing. The only audio related packages updated on my Arch install today was for FAudio and FAudio 32-bit libs but I don't think Steam uses those.

Closing for now, will reopen if the issue comes back.

[ToadKing]

The issue has started happening again, again with the crash in libpulse. I installed 32-bit libpulse libraries on my machine but it doesn't look like Steam is using them to run. This backtrace is a bit more descriptive though.

Backtrace: https://gist.github.com/ToadKing/32ace1f5798b626f7ebe8bbf6e09620f Dump: https://toadking.com/core.steam.1000.bbdca5415e264419b2b2341d42d6cc73.48159.1674414523000000.zst

I can't get the runtime system info because Steam is crashing before the main window even opens.

[TTimo]

I think the changes in the beta client will fix this, but you are using stable.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @ToadKing, can you try manually opting into Steam's client beta with something like echo "publicbeta" > ~/.local/share/Steam/package/beta and see if that gives you a better result?

[sproott]

can you try manually opting into Steam's client beta with something like echo "publicbeta" > ~/.local/share/Steam/package/beta and see if that gives you a better result?

I have this segfault problem and opting into beta didn't help.

[DefNaBoo]

Same here, the same segfault and the beta didn't help either.

[TTimo]

@sproott @DefNaBoo please provide uploaded crash IDs to confirm this is the same issue as OP

[sproott]

@TTimo How do I get that?

[TTimo]

When started from the terminal, Steam will report uploading crash minidumps with their IDs.

[DefNaBoo]

I don't find any ID in the terminal :

https://gist.github.com/DefNaBoo/1d2da768fcc63da4ef972532426aa101

[DefNaBoo]

I have just tested the new update and I still have the same problem, with the same backtrace as OP. It seem to be related to Archlinux because i have tried on another computer with a different linux (PopOS) and Steam works perfectly.

[ToadKing]

I am once again not able to reproduce the issue. I'll try to see if I can get it to happen again and if the beta build will fix it when it starts happening.

[DefNaBoo]

Same here, after a reboot, the application does not crash anymore. What's weird, is that I haven't done anything else beside rebooting ( no update, nothing ). @sproott Do you still have the problem ?

[sproott]

@DefNaBoo I don't. I did a reboot and after updating my packages and Steam, it launches.

[zontreck]

Opting into the beta fixed the issue for me. The problem seems to occur after the initial launch of steam. On first launch it is fine. Then after you exit, or reboot your system, steam won't open unless reinstalled. The beta seems to fix that. I'm on EndeavourOS which is Arch based like @ToadKing Unsure if our issues are identical but i was getting a segfault from steam before the beta.

[ToadKing]

I've had the issue happen again. Switching to the public beta did not fix it. Like others mentioned above, restarting my computer does fix it though.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @ToadKing, are you still experiencing this issue on an up to date system?

[ToadKing]

@kisak-valve I'm only using Linux on the weekends right now. It happened to me last week but hasn't happened to me again this week, although that could just be luck for now.

[ToadKing]

@kisak-valve Can confirm I can still sometimes reproduce this bug. Just ran into it again today.

On public beta, version 1679359315.

[ToadKing]

Another update: I found out that just restarting the pipewire service on my machine (systemctl --user restart pipewire.service) fixed it without requiring a restart.

[kisak-valve]

This issue should also be reported to the pipewire devs (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues) if it hasn't been already.

[TTimo]

possible pipewire changes broke pa_card_info ABI?

[ToadKing]

Reported in the Pipewire issue tracker: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/3132

[pinkflames]

PipeWire does not modify or even provide its own libpulse implementation, so pa_card_info ABI can't have changed. But maybe something related to pipewire-pulse (the PA daemon implementation) has changed and is triggering the crash.

An Arch user who knows how git works might be able to do git bisect by building the PipeWire package from AUR with particular commit IDs to try and catch the change which might have introduced the issue, if it's really specific to a commit made between 0.3.62 and 0.3.63.

[pv]

Those who have access to "libaudio.so" debug symbols and source code, could indicate what pulseaudio API (probably some callback?) the crash occurs at, and what is the unexpected content that causes the crash and maybe provide gdb prints of the invalid (pa_card_info?) structure contents.

[ToadKing]

I can also confirm the issue happens with the Flatpak version of Steam from Flathub. Reproduced today (April 9th, 2023).

           PID: 48613 (steam)
           UID: 1000 (michael)
           GID: 1000 (michael)
        Signal: 11 (SEGV)
     Timestamp: Sun 2023-04-09 14:41:02 CDT (1min 31s ago)
  Command Line: /home/michael/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam -no-cef-sandbox -no-cef-sandbox
    Executable: /home/michael/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam
 Control Group: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/app-flatpak-com.valvesoftware.Steam-43084.scope
          Unit: user@1000.service
     User Unit: app-flatpak-com.valvesoftware.Steam-43084.scope
         Slice: user-1000.slice
     Owner UID: 1000 (michael)
       Boot ID: e8701b8c9b5a48a9ae3a544763f4c84d
    Machine ID: 6d6dd9acdbb64b369e6dbb462baf13d3
      Hostname: linsux
       Storage: /var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.steam.1000.e8701b8c9b5a48a9ae3a544763f4c84d.48613.1681069262000000.zst (present)
  Size on Disk: 36.3M
       Message: Process 48613 (steam) of user 1000 dumped core.

                Stack trace of thread 5709:
                #0  0x00000000e898b147 n/a (/home/michael/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/libaudio.so + 0x1a147)
                #1  0x00000000f0d2c6e8 n/a (/app/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpulse.so.0.24.2 + 0x246e8)
                ELF object binary architecture: Intel 80386

[TTimo]

We are unable to reproduce this issue. I'm on a Manjaro system with PW 0.3.67, we have some devs on Debian and various Ubuntus and nobody has seen this happen reliably. At least not since a first round of changes went in (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9060#issuecomment-1400674173).

I updated my flatpak install and it's stable as well. Maybe it's specific to some hardware or driver, do you have a way to dump your various card profiles to some text format for review?

I see your flatpak crash produced a core file, if you want to upload this somewhere we can investigate in that direction.

[ToadKing]

I see your flatpak crash produced a core file, if you want to upload this somewhere we can investigate in that direction.

@TTimo Sorry for the late reply, finally got it to happen again. Here's a coredump from Flatpak

https://toadking.com/core.steam.1000.d3cfab426e8d4b56bc8960d2f53c896b.11548.1682376673000000.zst