protonscr

Launching Steam hangs and causes desktop to freeze

steamopen NVIDIA driversDistro Family: Arch
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#8135 · opened 2021-10-10 by businessfish · updated 2021-10-13 · 4 comments · github
Bbusinessfish 2021-10-10 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): I don't know how to check the client version without being able to open the client, I hope the following information is right/useful:
  • Package version: steam-manjaro 1.0.0.72-3
  • Startup log says: Startup - updater built Oct 6 2021 18:50:44
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Manjaro
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Startup log / output: https://gist.github.com/businessfish/c057f13174d8621f20edda05ef3f1469
Attempting to launch Steam hangs on the "connecting account" window and causes graphical applications to freeze. I believe my issue is similar to issues like https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/7031, but the suggested fix did not work in my case. While initially the versions of the three specified packages had a mismatch, I have since synced them up with no change. I have rebooted to ensure the kernel modules were reloaded as well.

$ pacman -Q nvidia-dkms nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils
nvidia-dkms 470.63.01-1
nvidia-utils 470.63.01-1
lib32-nvidia-utils 470.63.01-1

I have since reinstalled my graphics drivers, rebooted, and attempted to launch steam again. It did not work, but the log looks a little different: https://gist.github.com/businessfish/8caa0853930e165f8da3941af9a3de36

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Run steam
Kkisak-valve maintainer 2021-10-10 github

Hello @businessfish, no OpenGL application including Steam should be capable of freezing the entire system, which hints that you're seeing a video driver issue of some kind.

Bbusinessfish 2021-10-10 github

Apologies - that's more in line with what I meant to say. When I said freeze I meant just the graphical apps. Switching to another tty works fine, and killing steam from there fixes the video issue.

Bbusinessfish 2021-10-12 github

I've been troubleshooting based on issues like the one I mentioned in the original post, where the problem is created by nvidia driver version mismatch between those 3 packages.

I realized that I previously installed my nvidia drivers through Manjaro's mwhd and that my system probably wasn't using the nvidia-dkms drivers I had, so the versions between those and nvidia-utils and lib32-nvidia-utils were probably still different. I made certain my machine is using nvidia-dkms, but still no change. I've update the issue with another log where steam closed on its own and I did not need to kill it, not sure if it will be helpful.

I've tried everything I can think of at the moment, if @kisak-valve or anyone else could offer some assistance I would be extremely grateful!

Bbusinessfish 2021-10-13 github

I have solved the issue! Following this post, I deleted ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/libraryfolders.vdf and ~/.local/share/Steam/config/config.vdf because I did not see the lines the post said to delete, and steam now launches. Not sure if the graphics drivers had anything to do with it, and I'd rather stop troubleshooting this than re-reinstall the drivers I had installed when this issue began so I can find out.

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