BTW, I know you didn't ask for it, but you'll probably want to know:
Not sure what more to add at this time. Hope this all helps!
I also have random crashes after a few hours/days when I leave Steam unattended. (Context : Ubuntu / AMD Graphics and CPU, Background processing of shaders not allowed)
I can't remember when it started happening. Probably over a year ago.
So far it was not big deal, just had to relaunch Steam client.
But last time (2 days ago), after the crash, Steam process began to trigger intense hard drive activity on the HDD where the biggest Library was installed.
I can't provide anything really useful, except that ~/.steam/error.log ended like this :
src/common/pipes.cpp (837) : stalled cross-thread pipe.
src/common/pipes.cpp (837) : stalled cross-thread pipe.
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1612493737)
assert_20210206152955_585.dmp[1079254]: Uploading dump (out-of-process)
/tmp/dumps/assert_20210206152955_585.dmp
src/clientdll/steamclient.cpp (823) : Assertion Failed: bufRet.TellPut() == sizeof(uint8)
src/clientdll/steamclient.cpp (823) : Assertion Failed: bufRet.TellPut() == sizeof(uint8)
assert_20210206152955_585.dmp[1079254]: Finished uploading minidump (out-of-process): success = yes
assert_20210206152955_585.dmp[1079254]: response: CrashID=bp-e3383258-e3f4-49d6-9cef-b83c42210206
assert_20210206152955_585.dmp[1079254]: file ''/tmp/dumps/assert_20210206152955_585.dmp'', upload ye
s: ''CrashID=bp-e3383258-e3f4-49d6-9cef-b83c42210206''
Thread "CJobMgr::m_WorkThreadPool:2" (ID 982487) failed to shut down
Thread "CJobMgr::m_WorkThreadPool:2" (ID 982487) failed to shut down
and the last line was repeated endlessly.
How I detected the problem :
I noticed the noise of my HDD that should have been sleeping.
I could not unmount its partition.
I found with lsof that the process preventing my hdd sleep was jbd2
I would not take the risk of killing it so I looked elsewhere.
Then I noticed Steam icon was missing in top bar. I found its crash in logs, but 2 steam process were still active.
As soon as I manually killed the remaining steam proccess, the HDD activity stopped, and 5min later it was sleeping.
Nothing extracted yet.
Your system information
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
Randomly over the last year-ish, I will come back to STEAM and notice the whole application has crashed. The icon no longer shows up in the gnome system tray (which is a reliable telltale sign of this also), and the application does not respond to input. However the window is still visible in whatever state it was in when it crashed.
I have to kill the process and relaunch the application. So far as I can tell, the application never recovers itself, nor can I recover it without killing and relaunching.
I was having this issue when I was in the beta program, so I thought it was beta related, so I opted out. However, i still have it with release/stable branch too. I am not sure when it started, but it was in the last 1-2yr timeframe.
This has also occurred to me when I was on Ubuntu 19.10/19.04 in the above 1-2yr timeframe, so it appears unrelated to my Ubuntu version.
The time frame before the crash seems to be random, as I have gone days to weeks without it happening, but sometimes the frequency can be much more frequent than that. Sometimes only a few days between occurrences.
I have not yet found a way to reliably reproduce this, nor have I found any pattern of behaviour here. When STEAM crashes, I have observed no issues with any other application running on the system, so the issue appears isolated to STEAM.
Considering this issue has been going on for so long, I suspect this may be an under-reported issue.