I have the same problem on Windows, and I wouldn't consider my connection unstable. It's been happening a lot since an update I guess.
Have been experiencing this issue on LMDE UP8 too. I think you should mark this as an absolute priority issue. If you think I'm exaggerating I'll have you know that I've been trying to install for 5 hours straight now and this bug is preventing me to.
While looking for solutions, I've found countless threads in the community about this issue. People unable to install the client for months. I think the solution proposed by Fong, having the updater check for the already completed packages to not download them again and resume from there would be good enough. That, or at least provide a downloadable-from-browser/torrent package that can be installed offline as a temporary solution. Just give it priority, because trust me, this thing is actually worse than it seems.
https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=steam needs to be online to update
Hello LexMK, I solved this issue by limiting my bandwidth using trickle, because in my case when the download speed is raised to 50KB/s, my connection becomes unstable, so when I limited to 30KB/s and I can download steam without problem, so you can try it.
I'll try this solution too and see if it works. I think I have a stable enough connection, as I don't experience issues with anything else. My top in DL is around 900k. It would still be better if there were an "official" solution for this. Having the download restart when it fails instead of just picking up from where it left its kind of stupid. Steam already does it for their games, idk why they don't do it for their client too.
Tricke won't make it work no matter how low the speed I set it is. Eventually, the error happens. My connection is stable enough to play Dota 2 on another PC I have here (a netbook, I've installed Steam on it somewhere else) without disconnecting or experiencing lag, but not enough to install Steam.
This bug is currently preventing me from installing Steam at all no matter what I do.
Nothing extracted yet.
Detailed description
I have an unstable Internet connection and when I want to update the Steam client, it eventually throws "Steam needs to be online to update. Please confirm your network connection and try again.".
Console error before the message:
It might be a good idea to continue to download the package where it left off when I try to update again, and have an option to limit the download speed (because I have a stable Internet connection when I download with lower speed, currently I'm able to update using
trickleto limit my download/upload speed).Steps for reproducing the issue
System information
Distro: Arch Linux
Kernel: Linux 3.9.4
Window Manager: Openbox
Desktop Environment: none
Shell: /bin/bash
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz
RAM: 3871 MB
Disk: 459G
Full console log