If hard drive Steam library is in is full when trying to open Steam, the error message "Could not connect to Steam network. This could be a problem with your internet connection or with the Steam servers. Visit steampowered.com for more information" appears. I am not certain if this requires that Steam is NOT up-to-date.

Freeing hard drive space solves the "connection" error.

Installed Steam from Arch Linux repository to main HD (/dev/sdb2). x86_64. Steam library path points to another mounted HD (/dev/sda1 in my case), which has 0 bytes free space remaining.

Steps to reproduce:

Set Steam Library to a path with no free space.
Restart Steam.
(Downloading update fails)
-> Gives connection error instead of hard drive full error.

Processor Information:

    Vendor:  AuthenticAMD

    Speed: 3000 Mhz

    4 logical processors

    4 physical processors

    HyperThreading:  Unsupported

    FCMOV:  Supported

    SSE2:  Supported

    SSE3:  Supported

    SSSE3:  Unsupported

    SSE4a:  Supported

    SSE41:  Unsupported

    SSE42:  Unsupported



Network Information:

    Network Speed:  



Operating System Version:

    "Arch Linux" (64 bit)

    Kernel Name:  Linux

    Kernel Version:  3.10.3-1-ARCH

    X Server Vendor:  The X.Org Foundation

    X Server Release:  11402000

    X Window Manager:  Openbox

    Steam Runtime Version:  steam-runtime-release-i386_2013-06-28



Video Card:

    Driver:  NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GT 240/PCIe/SSE2



    Driver Version:  3.3.0 NVIDIA 319.32

    Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel

    Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz

    VendorID:  0x10de

    DeviceID:  0xca3

    Number of Monitors:  1

    Number of Logical Video Cards:  1

    Primary Display Resolution:  1920 x 1080

    Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080

    Primary Display Size: 6.30" x 3.54"  (7.20" diag)

                                            16.0cm x 9.0cm  (18.3cm diag)

    Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x

    Primary VRAM: 1024 MB

    Supported MSAA Modes:  2x 4x 8x 16x 



Sound card:

    Audio device: SigmaTel STAC9750,51



Memory:

    RAM:  3957 Mb



Miscellaneous:

    UI Language:  English

    LANG:  en_GB.UTF-8

    Microphone:  Not set

    Total Hard Disk Space Available:  150101 Mb

    Largest Free Hard Disk Block:  16448 Mb



Installed software:



Recent Failure Reports:

    Tue Jul 30 13:41:23 2013 GMT: file ''/tmp/dumps/crash_20130730163916_9.dmp'', upload no: ''Couldn't connect to server''