First, I'd like to know what can be done to get more information from the Steam client. Does steam make use...the name escapes me but involves &1 and &2. One is app output and the other is error output if memory serves.

Second, what would cause the steam client to report no information? When I start steam on my Ubuntu 12.10 rig, I get a metric ton of debugging information. On the new Linux user's rig, we get nothing.

@redhatnation you can try running 'LD_DEBUG=libs steam', it will be a bit annoying to read, but it may tell you a library steam needs but is not being found on the system.

Thanks for the quick response. I send the command to my fellow Steam user to run and report the results.

EDIT: Replaced blob of text with a gist link.

We caught a partial output from the LD_DEBUG setting. Tried piping everything to a file but that only captured the previously supplied lines.

It is a partial output because we had to copy / paste from a Terminal.
Default buffer was set far too low to capture all the output. (didn't
think about that until after we wrapped up) Due to the hour (2am on East
Coast), we called it a night.

If the attached file isn't helpful, let me know, please, and we will adjust
the Terminal buffer and try again.

https://gist.github.com/redhatnation/5007923

While troubleshooting, we observed steam create two processes but never saw any output from those processes. At first, I thought about an unclean shutdown and Steam was doing integrity checks or something but after about 5 mins, that idea faded.

We saw steam.sh and ubuntu_12_32/steam running.

I had the user check other virtual desktops but he saw no Steam GUI.

We also checked the logs directory in ~/.steam/steam/logs but he was missing the entire directory.

Sorry about the long blob of text.

For future reference, you can make a gist (https://gist.github.com/) and paste the information there.

Hey all! I am the user that redhatnation has been helping.

I woke up this morning, and for kicks-and-giggles, I rebooted ubuntu, double clicked the icon (nothing) and then manually tried running steam through terminal. Same as always.

But then I decided to do 'STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam' in Terminal, even though in the past, I've never received any warnings or errors. It used to say just this:

Running Steam on ubuntu 12.10 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is disabled by the user

But this time, for some reason, I saw a new error I've never seen before. Posting this link here, hopefully this works... this is my first post at github!

https://gist.github.com/NinjaChris098/5005781

-EDIT-

I decided to run this: sudo apt-get install ia32-libs, and reinstall them. I had already installed them in the past, which is probably why I never saw an error for it in the past, but I'll let you all know what happens once they're installed.

-EDIT-

Running 'STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam' after re-installing those libs does nothing now, except show the standard two lines.

EDIT: Removed email padding

Another user suggested:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
sudo apt-get update

then reinstalling ia32-libs then Steam.

Thanks for the advice, I will try both shortly tonight.

I have done: "sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt-get update then reinstalling ia32-libs then Steam." before, on my two re-installations.

The only difference this made, was that from then on, typing 'STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam' in terminal, no longer showed any errors, and instead only showed the standard two lines:

Running Steam on ubuntu 12.10 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically

Nonetheless, I will give this another shot tonight :) Thank you!

Alright, ran the 'LD_DEBUG=libs steam' command, here's the (massive) output...

https://gist.github.com/NinjaChris098/5011723

What do you see in the terminal, after a fresh reboot, running steam with no options or environment variables?

Hello slouken! Thanks for the response.

Upon a fresh reboot, the very first thing I do, is type this into terminal: steam
(Ubuntu response:)

Running Steam on ubuntu 12.10 32-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360966495_client)
Looks like steam didn't shutdown cleanly, scheduling immediate update check
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360966495_client)
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360966495_client)
unlinked 0 unorphaned pipes
(From here, the terminal hangs without returning to prompt. I've left it like this for long periods of time before without response. Other times, I've killed the applications that steam uses and then performed either the 'steam' or 'STEAM_RUNTIME=1' (or 0) commands, and gotten the same response.)

What happens if you run steam under gdb like this:
DEBUGGER=gdb steam

Then when you see the gdb prompt, type 'r' and hit return to start steam, and then when it's hung hit Ctrl-C to interrupt it, and then bt to see what's happening in the stack trace.

Thanks again slouken!

The info you asked for: https://gist.github.com/NinjaChris098/5021785

After pressing enter to continue:

#8 0x0806752c in RunSteam(int, char**, bool, bool) ()
#9 0x0805026e in main ()
(gdb)

-EDIT-

Ok, something odd just happened.

I had closed out of the debugger after that, and decided for kicks-and-giggles, that I would try running it again.

https://gist.github.com/NinjaChris098/5021835

Out of nowhere (I don't recall which line was printed before it happened), it ran the steam update, checking for something. Then, it went away after a few seconds, and returned to sticking. I typed 'r', but nothing happened, as if it ignored the command. So, I closed it and tried again.

This time, the prompt came up, and I typed 'r', and received this (yet again, a different message): https://gist.github.com/NinjaChris098/5021846

In Mint Linux version 14 the same problem happened after resetting my password in the Steam GUI, which launches fine.

My idea is only a temporary work-around, but getting the process ID in ps aux for the two Steam processes and running kill -9 got everything working again.