If you delete your Steam directory and redownload does that help?
No, of course not. But I actually just solved the problem! Using minidump I was able to trace the issue to fgrlx_dri.so, so I tried to remove the fgrlx driver and manually install the version currently provided on AMD website (http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/amd-driver-installer-catalyst-13.1-linux-x86.x86_64.zip). It worked perfectly with linux kernel 3.5.0-18-generic, and now I don't have any trouble running Steam or launching TF2 (well, at least is shows me the intro and the loading screen); so it seems that the recent 12.10 updates broke the supplied fglrx driver.
OK, marking this issue as an AMD driver problem and closing.
Nothing extracted yet.
So after the last update, I'm getting Steam crashing on me time and again when I switch to one of its windows or open a menu. Sometimes it takes no more than a couple of clicks to suddenly get it down and restarting. So I've checked the ~/Steam/steam.sh output, and it turned out it's segfaulting on me with no obvious explanation (by the way, I think it's supposed to launch a debugger but fails at that) : http://pastebin.com/apr46KKS
TF2 doesn't work either, segfaulting on launch, and actually as I tried to run it once again to get the error log, it now switched to a different error, telling me this:
tr@sftetra:~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/000/Team Fortress 2$ ./hl2_linux -game tf failed to dlopen /home/tr/Steam/SteamApps/000/Team Fortress 2/bin/filesystem_steam.so error=libsteam_api.so: невозможно открыть разделяемый объектный файл: Нет такого файла или каталога AppFramework : Unable to load module /home/tr/Steam/SteamApps/000/Team Fortress 2/bin/filesystem_steam.so! Unable to load /home/tr/Steam/SteamApps/000/Team Fortress 2/bin/filesystem_steam.soObviously, both filesystem_steam.so and libsteam.api.so are there and untouched. Other games, like Dungeons of Dredmor or Solar 2, seem to run fine.
Also, on an unrelated note, cairo-dock shows all the subwindows as 'steam' for some reason:
I believe the crash dumps are uploaded.
Hardware info:
Processor Information:
Vendor: AuthenticAMD
Speed: 1600 Mhz
4 logical processors
4 physical processors
HyperThreading: Unsupported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Supported
SSE41: Unsupported
SSE42: Unsupported
Network Information:
Network Speed:
Operating System Version:
Ubuntu 12.10 (64 bit)
Kernel Name: Linux
Kernel Version: 3.5.0-18-generic
X Server Vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Server Release: 11300000
X Window Manager: Compiz
Steam Runtime Version:
Video Card:
Driver: ATI Technologies Inc. AMD Radeon HD 6620G
Driver Version: 4.2.11903 Compatibility Profile Context
Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
VendorID: 0x1002
DeviceID: 0x6760
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 2
Primary Display Resolution: 1600 x 900
Desktop Resolution: 1600 x 900
Primary Display Size: 15,04" x 8,43" (17,20" diag)
38,2cm x 21,4cm (43,7cm diag)
Primary VRAM Not Detected
Sound card:
Audio device: ATI R6xx HDMI
Memory:
RAM: 3430 Mb
Miscellaneous:
UI Language: English
LANG: ru_RU.UTF-8
Microphone: Not set
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 26688 Mb
Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 1146 Mb
Installed software:
Recent Failure Reports:
Mon Feb 18 18:31:53 2013 GMT: file ''/tmp/dumps/assert_20130218223145_1.dmp'', upload yes: ''CrashID=bp-656e38b6-e5c8-40cc-8b56-b90882130218''
Mon Feb 18 19:05:37 2013 GMT: file ''/tmp/dumps/assert_20130218230527_1.dmp'', upload yes: ''CrashID=bp-d39ce89a-b86a-4b8e-95ff-b73612130218''`