Simon McVittie:
Control: tags -1 + moreinfo unreproducible
On Sun, 30 Nov 2025 at 11:13:48 +0000, Ximin Luo wrote:
The latest steam client cannot be executed
It works here (I'm using the public beta, if that matters).
I see that you have Steam installed in a non-standard location /opt/steam,
which is not the ~/.steam/debian-installation used by Debian, and also not the
~/.local/share/Steam used by Valve.
Are ~/.steam/steam and ~/.steam/root both symlinks to /opt/steam? For that
installation location, both of them should be.
Yes, both of them are symlinked to the correct location as documented in
README.Debian.
The packaging of the Steam client in Debian does not have control over the
upstream Steam client and how it downloads its own files: the part we have
control over ends at the end of /usr/games/steam, when it runs steam.sh. If
there's a problem with the upstream part,
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/ might be a better place to
report it.
~~~~
$ steam
[..]
[----] Verifying installation...
[2025-11-30 11:09:11] Verification complete
UpdateUI: skip show logo
dlmopen /opt/steam/ubuntu12_32/steamui.so failed: libXtst.so.6: cannot open
shared object file: No such file or directory
Have you deleted, or otherwise disabled, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH Steam Runtime
provided by Steam? (~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime for the user that
is running Steam.) Disabling this is specifically not supported.
I have not done anything like that to my installation. In fact it was working
up until the latest update.
libXtst.so.6 is meant to be provided by
~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXtst.so.6.
(But if you happen to have Debian's libxtst6:i386 installed, that newer version
will take precedence and the one in the Steam Runtime will be ignored.)
OK, this file does exist.
If this has somehow not been unpacked correctly, deleting
~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime or running Steam as
steam --reset
might help.
This moves Steam files and game files around, so it would be a good idea to
have a backup or snapshot of saved games and anything that would be
inconvenient to re-download.
dlmopen /opt/steam/ubuntu12_32/steamui.so failed: libvpx.so.6: cannot open
shared object file: No such file or directory
This is provided as a vendored library by the Steam client itself: it's
~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libvpx.so.6, and ubuntu12_32/steamui.so has a RUNPATH
on $ORIGIN to be able to locate it.
OK, this file also does exist.
Again, if things have not been unpacked correctly, running Steam as `steam
--reset` might help.
Neither deleting ~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime nor running `steam
--reset` helped.
However, I deleted the whole of `~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32` as well as
`~/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/package`, reran `steam`, it redownloaded the runtime
and now it's working again.
After some playing around I realised the error occured because I did a `sudo
chmod -R g+s` on `/opt/steam` recently, which mistakenly applied this to
*files* as well as directories. Re-running `sudo chmod -R g+s` after the
previous delete-and-reupdate fix, makes the error come back. Undoing it with
`find . -not -type d -execdir chmod -h g-s '{}' \;`, fixes the error in the
most direct way - without having to do the delete-and-reupdate that also works.
In fact with `g+s` set, you get a bunch of extra warnings in the terminal, but
steam decides to ignore this and carries on running, so I didn't think to paste
this in my original log:
~~~~
[..]
(process:1407845): steam-runtime-tools-CRITICAL **: 23:43:23.784:
_srt_constructor: assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
(process:1407847): steam-runtime-tools-CRITICAL **: 23:43:23.865:
_srt_constructor: assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
(process:1407848): steam-runtime-tools-CRITICAL **: 23:43:23.867:
_srt_constructor: assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
srt-logger[1407848]: Internal error: _srt_find_myself: assertion
'_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
(srt-logger:1407848): GLib-CRITICAL **: 23:43:23.867: g_propagate_error:
assertion 'src != NULL' failed
srt-logger[1407848]: E: Assertion failure
steam.sh[1407768]: Couldn't set up srt-logger, not logging to console-linux.txt
(process:1407881): steam-runtime-tools-CRITICAL **: 23:43:23.887:
_srt_constructor: assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
steam-runtime-check-requirements[1407881]: Internal error: _srt_find_myself:
assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
steam.sh[1407768]: steam-runtime-check-requirements failed with an unexpected
nonzero exit status. Trying to continue
[..]
~~~~
TBH this is still an upstream bug, it should not be segfaulting on incorrect
permissions:
~~~~
$ ./ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/bin/steam-runtime-check-requirements
(process:1624798): steam-runtime-tools-CRITICAL **: 23:57:54.387:
_srt_constructor: assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
steam-runtime-check-requirements[1624798]: Internal error: _srt_find_myself:
assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
./ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/bin/steam-runtime-check-requirements
exit code 139
$ ./ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/bin/steam-runtime-check-requirements
(process:1624878): steam-runtime-tools-CRITICAL **: 23:59:05.329:
_srt_constructor: assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
steam-runtime-check-requirements[1624878]: Internal error: _srt_find_myself:
assertion '_srt_check_not_setuid ()' failed
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
./ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/bin/steam-runtime-check-requirements
exit code 139
~~~~
Best,
X
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https://github.com/infinity0/pubkeys.git
