I'm seeing the same also on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and /tmp is like some sort of graveyard. The CPU spike is not something I've noticed.
Just steam crashing when launching games, srt-logger stays open, and then it can only be killed with -9.
Steam Beta Branch: Stable Client
Steam Version: 1769025840
Steam Client Build Date: Wed, Jan 21 9:12 AM UTC -08:00
Steam Web Build Date: Wed, Jan 21 11:41 AM UTC -08:00
Steam API Version: SteamClient023
Distribution: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
Steam Logs: which ones
GPU:
Intel UHD Graphics 630
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Driver Version: 580.126.09 CUDA Version: 13.0
It loops like this:
Feb 03 23:07:01
steamwebhelper.sh[2695447]: Starting steamwebhelper with steamrt steam runtime at /home/pseud/.local/share/Steam/steamrt64/pv-runtime/steam-runtime-steamrt/_v2-entry-point
Feb 03 23:07:02
steamwebhelper[2695459]: exec ./steamwebhelper -nocrashdialog -lang=en_US -cachedir=/home/pseud/.local/share/Steam/config/htmlcache (this continues)
Feb 03 23:07:12 Orbit steamwebhelper[2695707]: steamwebhelper.sh[2695695]: Starting steamwebhelper under bootstrap steamrt steam runtime via: /home/pseud/.local/share/Steam/steamrt64/pv-runtime/steam-runtime-steamrt/_v2-entry-point
Feb 03 23:07:12 Orbit steamwebhelper[2695707]: steamwebhelper.sh[2695695]: Starting steamwebhelper with steamrt steam runtime at /home/pseud/.local/share/Steam/steamrt64/pv-runtime/steam-runtime-steamrt/_v2-entry-point
Feb 03 23:07:12 Orbit steamwebhelper[2695707]: pressure-vessel-wrap[2695695]: N: Can't find a11y bus: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Could not activate remote peer 'org.a11y.Bus': activation request failed: unit is masked
Feb 03 23:07:12 Orbit steamwebhelper[2695707]: exec ./steamwebhelper -nocrashdialog -lang=en_US -cachedir=/home/pseud/.local/share/Steam/config/htmlcache
Over and over and over until I kill it.
Update with strace results
Had a moment to do some additional troubleshooting that is hopefully useful.
Notably, steamwebhelper exits clean (0).
$ tail steam_strace.txt
1791423 exit_group(0 <unfinished ...>
1791426 <... restart_syscall resumed>) = ?
1791423 <... exit_group resumed>) = ?
1791427 +++ exited with 0 +++
1791426 +++ exited with 0 +++
1791190 <... read resumed>, "", 2048) = 0
1791423 +++ exited with 0 +++
1791190 close(6) = 0
1791190 exit_group(0) = ?
1791190 +++ exited with 0 +++
Symptoms
Silently crashes either on trying to pull up the library or after attempting launch a game and enters an infinite crash loop on startup. The main client window never renders, and steamwebhelper restarts repeatedly.
Running htop shows those same srt-logger processes even after killing steam leaving several zombie processes
ps -eo pid,stat,ppid,comm | grep steam
1750606 Z 1750498 steam <defunct>
1751183 Z 1751073 steam <defunct>
1758247 Z 1758137 steam <defunct>
1765908 Z 1765797 steam <defunct>
1768521 Z 1768411 steam <defunct>
1771265 Z 1771155 steam <defunct>
1772724 Z 1772601 steam <defunct>
1773604 Z 1773493 steam <defunct>
1775172 Z 1775062 steam <defunct>
Investigation
journalctl shows the helper failing to connect to the main process via the DBus session bus:
steam-runtime-steam-remote: Steam is not running: No such device or address
^ this gets logged after steam crashes (library won't load from tray or a game never launches but takes steam out with it)
It persists through these attempts to clear tmp & cached files:
959 kill -9 $(ps -eo pid,stat,ppid,comm | grep steam | awk '{ print $3 }')
960 rm -rf /tmp/.com* /tmp/dumps /tmp/.com* /tmp/steam* ~/.local/share/Steam/config/html* /dev/shm/u1000-ValveIPCSharedObj-Steam /tmp/pressure*
The only fix is logging out (resetting the DBus session in /run/user/1000/).
strace confirms steamwebhelper is NOT crashing. It exits voluntarily (Clean Exit 0) after failing to establish IPC, causing the main loop to restart it.
Non-Fatal Errors (Ruled Out):
My system has at-spi masked. The logs show GDBus.Error... unit is masked, but I have confirmed this is non-fatal. Steam launches successfully with this error present once the IPC session is reset. (IE this error was part of the log I shared earlier but the session issues persist whether the unit is masked or not)
Steps to Reproduce
Start Steam on Wayland.
Trigger an unclean shutdown (kill -9 following a game failing to launch and dragging steam down with it as an example.
Attempt to relaunch.
Observe steamwebhelper loop due to stale socket references in /run/user/$UID/.
Nothing extracted yet.
Your system information
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
Steps for reproducing this issue:
Some of the time when doing this, a process called
/home/linus/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam -srt-logger-openedwill start consuming close to 300% CPU and 19 MiB/s disk write. Steam also becomes largely non-functional; the UI still mostly responds, but if you try to e.g. view a different game in the library, the page won't load. Eventually, Steam crashes.