Launch failure "basic_string::_M_construct null not valid"

[PureTryOut]

▶ flatpak run com.mojang.Minecraft
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::logic_error'
  what():  basic_string::_M_construct null not valid

This error appears on my laptop running Alpine Linux. However, on my desktop running Gentoo Linux it works fine. And here I was thinking Flatpak made applications work on all the distros without additional effort... It seems to be a launcher bug?

[AsciiWolf]

Hmm, seems to be a bug in the launcher code. Let's see if the launcher update fixes it.

[PureTryOut]

Sadly it did not :cry:

I just don't understand why it would happen on one system and not on the other. Yeah the distros are entirely different, but on both systems it runs inside Flatpak. Isn't the point that it should just work?

[AsciiWolf]

Yep, it should work on both systems. :-/

[PureTryOut]

I've made a bug report upstream https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MCL-12281

[peterix]

Cease doing this. You have no right to redistribute the launcher this way.

[AsciiWolf]

@peterix Huh? There is nothing distributed directly in the Minecraft Flatpak, it's using extra-data (the launcher is downloaded and unpacked from Mojang's source during the Flatpak installation) + there is clearly said in the AppData file that this package is unofficial.

[PureTryOut]

Well, it seems he realized he was in the wrong as he corrected himself on the Mojang bug tracker (on which he also said it was illegal at first).

Anyways he calls Flatpak weird and wouldn't recommend it to anyone, so we can forget getting any serious help from Mojang. I doubt he looked into it properly :man_shrugging: But this is getting offtopic.

It seems Flatpak currently isn't as distro agnostic as it advertises itself to be. I have some issues building some Flatpaks on my system as well while it works fine on my other system.

[PureTryOut]

Found the issue. I've compared environment variables between both systems and one the system with this issue, LC_ALL wasn't set. Running LC_ALL=C flatpak run com.mojang.Minecraft made the launcher start properly.

Is there a way to set fallback environment variables like these in the Flatpak itself?

[AsciiWolf]

Thanks for investigating the issue. It would probably be possible to set fallback environment variables in the game launcher script.

[AsciiWolf]

Similar issue as #6.

[GustavoPeredo]

Here is how I fixed the issue: flatpak override --user --env="LC_ALL=C" com.mojang.Minecraft Reference: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/559129/how-do-i-permanently-set-an-environment-variable-for-a-specific-flatpak-applicat

[PureTryOut]

That is good to know, thanks! However, I'd like a solution that works out of the box.

[nanonyme]

Note Steam app had these same issues. It's probably some specific LC_ value that helps. https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/blob/beta/com.valvesoftware.Steam.yml#L44-L50; setting LC_ALL is not a generic solution.

[SystemlessDev]

Note Steam app had these same issues. It's probably some specific LC_ value that helps. https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/blob/beta/com.valvesoftware.Steam.yml#L44-L50; setting LC_ALL is not a generic solution.

I don't see why we can't just set LC_ALL. In my testing it is a "generic solution".

[nanonyme]

If there's no localizations involved, it might be fine.

[devurandom]

Here is how I fixed the issue: flatpak override --user --env="LC_ALL=C" com.mojang.Minecraft Reference: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/559129/how-do-i-permanently-set-an-environment-variable-for-a-specific-flatpak-applicat

Thanks! This works.

Could this please be incorporated into the Flatpak itself?

[AsciiWolf]

Minecraft Launcher is localized and translated into many languages, the correct translation is automatically used based on environment variables, so I am not sure whether this is a good solution. @nanonyme What is your opinion about this?

[nanonyme]

I would suggest figuring out minimal set of LC_* to override to make a decision

[erxbout]

Seems like this problem still exists.. Had the same problem (running PopOs with KDE) If you do not want to start a terminal every time here is a summary of what I did:

official deb package

I use the deb package from the official website, installed it like normal and edited the .desktop file:

~/.local/share/applications/minecraft-launcher.desktop

if you replace the line

Exec=minecraft-launcher

with

Exec=export LC_ALL=C && minecraft-launcher

its working fine and you can start minecraft from your application launcher just like normal

flatpak

using flatpak the desktop file is located here:

~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/applications/com.mojang.Minecraft.desktop

and you can add --env="LC_ALL=C" to the Exec line like this

Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --env="LC_ALL=C" --command=minecraft com.mojang.Minecraft

hope that helped :D

[SystemlessDev]

I just did some testing here. The minecraft launcher doesn't seem to pick the language after what locale the system has set. I am at least not able to make it select norwegian bokmål automatically.

When it comes to the env variable it wants us to set. It doesn't care about any of the LC_* variables. It wants LANG to be set to something it knows. Setting it to nn_NO.UTF-8 (norwegian nynorsk) makes it crash, however with nb_NO (norwegian bokmål) it launches fine.

Considering how it doesn't care about the system locale after all I think it's the best to just set LC_ALL=C and call it a day.