I’ve been using Kinoite for over a year now, mostly for work. Today I decided to try out my Steam library but didn’t get very far. After installing the Flatpak and attempting to run with flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam I see these logs repeated before it eventually gives up:
steamwebhelper.sh[129]: Starting steamwebhelper under bootstrap steamrt steam runtime via: /var/home/me/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamrt64/pv-runtime/steam-runtime-steamrt/_v2-entry-point
steamwebhelper.sh[129]: CEF sandbox already disabled
steamwebhelper.sh[129]: Starting steamwebhelper with steamrt steam runtime at /var/home/me/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamrt64/pv-runtime/steam-runtime-steamrt/_v2-entry-point
pv-adverb[245]: W: Cannot create temporary directory for platform specific libraries: mkdirat: No such file or directory
pv-adverb[245]: W: Cannot create temporary directory for locales: mkdirat: No such file or directory
ERROR: ld.so: object '/run/parent/app/links/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libshared-library-guard.so' cannot be loaded as audit interface: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32; ignored.
exec ./steamwebhelper -nocrashdialog -lang=en_US -cachedir=/var/home/me/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/config/htmlcache -steampid=96 -buildid=1785799196 -steamid=0 -logdir=/var/home/me/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/logs -uimode=7 -startcount=0 -steamuniverse=Public -realm=Global -clientui=/var/home/me/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/clientui -steampath=/var/home/me/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam -launcher=0 --valve-initial-threadpool-size=4 --valve-enable-site-isolation --enable-smooth-scrolling --no-sandbox --password-store=basic --log-file=/var/home/me/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/logs/cef_log.txt --disable-quick-menu --disable-component-update --gaia-url=http://disabled.invalid --enable-features=PlatformHEVCDecoderSupport --disable-features=WinRetrieveSuggestionsOnlyOnDemand,SpareRendererForSitePerProcess,DcheckIsFatal,BlockPromptsIfIgnoredOften,WebUsbDeviceDetection,ValveFFmpegAllowLowDelayHEVC
Steam Runtime Launch Service: starting steam-runtime-launcher-service
Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service is running pid 270
bus_name=com.steampowered.PressureVessel.LaunchAlongsideSteam
I realize the Steam Flatpak is unofficial, but it does sound like it should work from various things I’ve found online. My guess is that the warnings about not being able to create temporary directories may be preventing it from downloading architecture-specific binaries, which then results in the “wrong ELF class” error, but that’s just a hypothesis.
Since it cannot create directories it is supposed to, it makes me think there is a permission issue here. Although Steam should have access to your Home directory, maybe you can try giving Steam the permission to access your Home directory using Flatseal? Maybe it could work.
I’ve used Steam plenty on Atomic desktops, it should work no problem.
What do you mean by “before it eventually gives up”? If you mean nothing shows up, it may be because of Steam’s poorly designed bootstrapping that happens on first setup. It downloads a bunch of dependencies before showing a window.
maybe you can try giving Steam the permission to access your Home directory using Flatseal
When I look under Settings/Application Permissions/Steam/Flatpak Settings, I see All user files is disabled. If I try to enable access (doesn’t matter if read-only, write, or create) and run I see:
$ flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam
INFO:root:https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/wiki
WARNING:root:Found filesystem "home:ro" in static permissions
ERROR:root:Refusing to launch in order to prevent issues; if you've added an override with access to some of the filesystems above, please remove it and see https://github.com/flathub/com.valvesoftware.Steam/wiki#i-want-to-add-external-disk-for-steam-libraries
What do you mean by “before it eventually gives up”
It tries maybe 10 times and then bails out, showing an error dialog with this text and options:
steamwebhelper, a critical Steam component, is not responding. The Steam UI will not be usable. Click here for more information.
Let's try to help:
- Restart Steam
- Restart Steam with GPU Acceleration disabled
- Restart Steam with Browser Sandboxing disabled
- Restart streamwebhelper
- Exit Steam
Mind sharing the outputs of the following?
They all display no output.
The only two pieces of “novelty” I have in my setup that I could imagine having an impact are:
$TMP points to a directory at /home/me/tmp rather than /tmp. However, I’ve tried running with TMP=/tmp flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam and see the same problem.
I have network shares auto-mounted under /mnt. I’m not sure why this would matter, but I do see that the Flatpak has access to this location by default, so perhaps it’s a factor.