protonscr

Fresh installation of steam on ubuntu failed: Steamwebhelper is not responding

steamclosed Distro Family: UbuntuWeb Component
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#11909 · opened 2025-04-16 by luorui93 · updated 2025-05-09 · 6 comments · github
Lluorui93 2025-04-16 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1743554648
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Ubuntu 22.04
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] No
  • Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No]
  • Steam Logs: [generate by running this command in a terminal tar -zcvf ~/Desktop/steam-logs.tar.gz ~/.steam/steam/logs]

steam-logs.tar.gz

  • GPU: Nvidia/Intel/AMD Nvidia 4090, Driver: 550.120

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

I'm trying to do a fresh install of steam on my ubuntu 22.04 machine, after installation, running the steam launch would give me the 'steamwebhelper not responding' error.
Searching through the issues, I found several possible solutions but none of them worked.

  1. I tried to rerun from terminal with the flag -vgui and -no-cef-sandbox, no success
  2. I also tried remove xdg-desktop-portal-gnome , no success
  3. deleted /tmp/dump, no success, cleared nvidia cache, no success
  4. I used to use driver 535, upgraded to 550 and still no success

I tried to compare my log with another machine running Steam successfully, the only noticeable differences I can make are

[2025-04-16 10:08:03] [2025-04-16 10:08:03] Failed to load cached hosts file (File 'update_hosts_cached.vdf' not found), using defaults
[2025-04-16 10:08:03] [2025-04-16 10:08:03] Using the following download hosts for Public, Realm steamglobal
[2025-04-16 10:08:03] [2025-04-16 10:08:03] 1. https://client-update.steamstatic.com, /, Realm 'steamglobal', weight was 1, source = 'baked in'
[2025-04-16 10:08:03] 04/16 10:08:03 minidumps folder is set to /tmp/dumps

and

[2025-04-16 10:08:25] src/steamUI/steamuisharedjscontroller.cpp (672) : Failed creating offscreen shared JS context
[2025-04-16 10:08:25] src/steamUI/steamuisharedjscontroller.cpp (672) : Failed creating offscreen shared JS context

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Download the steam_latest.deb from official website
  2. Install it with dpkg -i
  3. Open steam, after updating the runtime, the window pops up

Image

I've installed steams on many different Ubuntu machines and this is the first time I encountered this problem. If someone could give some direction that would be extremely appreciated.

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2025-04-16 github

Hello @luorui93, [2025-04-16 10:09:08] dlmopen steamclient.so failed: steamclient.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory looks like a line of interest from your webhelper-linux.txt log.

Lluorui93 2025-04-19 github

Hello @luorui93, [2025-04-16 10:09:08] dlmopen steamclient.so failed: steamclient.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory looks like a line of interest from your webhelper-linux.txt log.

Thanks for the reply! I didn't pick this error up because when I ran steam on another machine, it had the same error but the client can launch without problem.. So I think this might not be relevant.

TTTimo 2025-04-21 github

The dlmopen steamclient.so failed: steamclient.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory error is indeed a red herring. It's related to a failed attempt by CEF to initialize the Steam API (it either succeeds by trying different paths, or it doesn't actually need it).

TTTimo 2025-04-21 github

Sorry I fat fingered the close button. I see no useful information that would explain why steamwebhelper is crashing on startup, but if I had to guess it's probably a driver issue.

It looks like you have a software mesa implementation available in addition to your NVidia GPU, you could disable or remove that first. Although it does not look like steamwebhelper is trying to pick it up.

Please run a steam-runtime-system-info diagnostic and provide the result. You can trigger this from the command line with the following command: ~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/run.sh -- steam-runtime-system-info

Lluorui93 2025-04-23 github

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/11909#issuecomment-2819219776

Thank you for the help! Really appreciate it! Here is the output of the command you provided. In the meantime I'll try to remove the mesa implementation.

steam_runtime_system_info.txt

Lluorui93 2025-05-09 github

After a long time of debugging. It turns out the culprit is the ESET antivirus software. ESET will 'hijack' all socket communications on the localhost, which for some reason causes the webhelper not working. I was diagnosing another network problem with wireshark and found out this problem. After uninstalling ESET, the steam can launch properly.