Hello @memory-thrasher, swrast is mesa's slower software renderer, and the fact that Steam is trying to use it hints that you're using nVidia's proprietary driver, but don't have the video driver's 32 bit userspace component installed. The nVidia proprietary driver requires that the driver's running kernel module, 32 bit userspace, and 64 bit userspace are installed and have exactly the same version to work properly.
Please check that you have libnvidia-gl-465:i386 installed with something like apt policy libnvidia-gl-465:i386 and install it with sudo apt install libnvidia-gl-465:i386, then retest.
The issue reports you linked don't look like they're related to the log you've shared.
Thanks @kisak-valve . I will remember that if this issue crops up again. As I stated, I no longer have an affected system at my disposal, so I cannot retest this, though I have linked your comment to the other redditors who have also reported this problem.
The nVidia proprietary driver requires that the driver's running kernel module, 32 bit userspace, and 64 bit userspace are installed and have exactly the same version to work properly.
I guess that makes sense, since steam is the only 32-bit application I run that thinks it needs a 3d rendering context for a flat page. Though it seems to me that steam could be checking for this and displaying a more helpful error, rather than segfaulting.
This is a relatively common pitfall from the way Debian manages driver dependencies, which is inherited by Ubuntu, and the driver packaging is outside the scope of Steam itself.
There's a feature request for better feedback at #5366 (and possibly others). Closing in favor of the older issue report.
I'm not saying steam should fix the way the drivers are packaged. I am saying steam could check for the existence of the nvidia drivers package and then the existance of the i386 lib, and give a more helpful error message
Nothing extracted yet.
system information
hardware
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
Simply put, steam crashes in an X exception handler which tries to access (LEA) a negative memory address (32-bit starting with 0x8). This happens after steam verifies itself, before the login prompt. It happened every single time I tried it, up until I reinstalled (an earlier version of) the os.
I pinged reddit, and found others having similar issues on other ubuntu flavors but no solution. I experienced another X-related issue and downgraded to 20.04 lts "focal" which fixed the problem for me. I have been unable to reproduce the issue in focal, though other redditors claim to be experiencing the issue. I have also been unable to reproduce it on a hirsute hippo vm.
I believe this is the same issue reported in #7859 and #7847, and maybe more, but I have more info available than them at first glance.
dumped exerts (copied from my reddit post, formatting may be better there):
https://gist.github.com/memory-thrasher/a2c6adc42628366e250138654b2f371f
I was instructed to report this here before I could render my experience to repeatable installation steps or identify conflicting packages.
I am relatively certain there is a hardware/driver component to this, seeing as it works in a vm with the same packages installed. I am currently working on setting up a dual boot that is affected so I can try some package/driver combinations.
Steps for reproducing this issue: