[SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

ewaller · 2015-01-16 16:43:44

I do not use steam, nor I am completely sure what it even is. I am not a gamer.

But, this little article http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/01/1 … sers-files over on SlashDot indicates that there may be a serious bug in Steam. If you move its folder that could (according to the article) lead to loss of all user files.

I do not know if any of this is valid or applicable to Arch. I just wanted to flag this to avoid disaster in the event this is real.

Marked as solved as this has been taken care of upstream.

Last edited by ewaller (2015-01-23 22:25:54)

drcouzelis · 2015-01-16 17:19:41

Slashdot wrote:

steam had apparently deleted everything owned by my user recursively from the root directory. Including my 3tb external drive I back everything up to that was mounted under /media.

A reminder that if you don't have an offsite (or at least, disconnected) backup then you don't have a backup.

ugjka · 2015-01-16 17:24:46

reddit wrote:

The call to rm is commented "Scary!", implying that the author knew of the risks.

Valve developers...

clfarron4 · 2015-01-16 18:00:25

Ouch...

I created a separate partition to install my Steam games to, that way I don't need to move and then symlink my steam folder when I get touchy about how much space I have left in my home folder.

But still, it's good to know.

whoops · 2015-01-16 19:24:22

I created a separate partition to install my Steam games to

Not sure how a separate partition protects you from

 rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*

? Or does it somehow prevent $STEAMROOT from being empty at the time that line's processed?

Either way - I'm glad that I moved steam to its own user account a while ago already (seems to work fine with "sux" from AUR so far so I don't even have to switch displays). That should stop steam from messing up anything except itself, right (it's not using root somehow or something)?

( Just in case anyone else is planning to exile steam: You have to rm-r "/tmp/steam*" or it will freeze due to the filename collision with different users; that f.*ing bug cost me HOURS of my time because I though it was a problem with obsolete path names or my graphics card and fixed several things that didn't need fixing )

clfarron4 · 2015-01-16 19:27:05

whoops wrote:

I created a separate partition to install my Steam games to
Not sure how a separate partition protects you from
 rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*
? Or does it somehow prevent $STEAMROOT from being empty at the time that line's processed?

It doesn't.

It removes one possible reason to move my Steam folders around.

whoops · 2015-01-16 19:52:06

Oh, so that's the reason this bug can happen? Guess I was lucky when I moved it away - didn't even know you could "reset" steam and brutishly ran "find-while-sed-i" over the whole thing instead :3

holy sh*t(abridged version):

steam.sh:18:STEAMROOT="$(cd "${0%/*}" && echo $PWD)"
...
steam.sh-427-function reset_steam()
steam.sh-428-{
...
steam.sh-447-   # Don't let the user interrupt us, or they may corrupt the install
steam.sh-448-   trap ignore_signal INT
...
steam.sh-467-   # Scary!
steam.sh:468:   rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*
...
steam.sh-489-   return $STATUS
steam.sh-490-}
...
steam.sh:549:if [ "$1" = "--reset" ]; then
steam.sh:550:   reset_steam
steam.sh-551-   exit
steam.sh-552-fi

So... at least it looks like that's only possible to occur if you try to reset steam manually by using "steam.sh --reset"? Or is some other (install?) script/executable making use of that function automatically?

Last edited by whoops (2015-01-16 19:52:38)

Pse · 2015-01-18 00:29:54

whoops wrote:

So... at least it looks like that's only possible to occur if you try to reset steam manually by using "steam.sh --reset"? Or is some other (install?) script/executable making use of that function automatically?

See the last comment by johnv-valve at the bug report (GitHub) for a way to reproduce this without explicitly using '--reset'.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam- … ssues/3671

Vizitor · 2015-01-20 22:24:23

Steam Client Update Released
...

Linux
Fixed a rare bug where Steam could delete user files when failing to start

ziltoide · 2015-01-21 19:24:18

Vizitor wrote:

Steam Client Update Released
...
Linux
Fixed a rare bug where Steam could delete user files when failing to start

Does Steam itself do the update or do we have to wait for the arch package in multilib to be updated? I'm afraid I might end up affected by this bug since I had to do some fiddling with restoring files after switching to ext4 from btrfs.

Alternatively, would uninstalling steam and deleting ~/.local/share/Steam and ~/.steam give a fresh start since I don't care about losing steam settings or installed games?

clfarron4 · 2015-01-21 20:22:52

ziltoide wrote:

Does Steam itself do the update or do we have to wait for the arch package in multilib to be updated? I'm afraid I might end up affected by this bug since I had to do some fiddling with restoring files after switching to ext4 from btrfs.
Alternatively, would uninstalling steam and deleting ~/.local/share/Steam and ~/.steam give a fresh start since I don't care about losing steam settings or installed games?

I just did the update through Steam and it seems to have gone fine for me. I don't know what's the best advice for whether you should update the client first or wipe and then update though, because you're on an affected version...

If I'm not mistaken, the package in the repositories is just the base installer and not the client itself.

whoops · 2015-01-21 20:32:53

My steam folder updated fine all by itself even after I moved it to a different user account for safety and removed the pacman steam package. Not planning to install it systemwide again, seems like a needless risk to me.

Last edited by whoops (2015-01-21 20:33:19)

Vizitor · 2015-01-22 07:58:23

ziltoide wrote:

Does Steam itself do the update or do we have to wait for the arch package in multilib to be updated?

It does by itself.

GloW_on_dub · 2015-01-23 10:22:23

The update took place january 17 on my computer, no problem at all.

ewaller · 2015-01-23 12:59:53

Does this mean I can mark this as solved?

bleach · 2015-01-23 13:17:23

I ran into this problem a while ago and had to redownload my games and mods(the configs and saves are stored else where and were not touched/deleted). the last update did not have this issue.

edit: it was only the steam folder though and not my whole home directory.

Last edited by bleach (2015-01-23 13:27:17)

clfarron4 · 2015-01-23 13:19:07

ewaller wrote:

Does this mean I can mark this as solved?

Unless anyone here is willing to test it for us and prove it isn't solved, I'd say yes (as upstream have said so and I haven't heard of anything on the waves which says it hasn't after the update)...

Last edited by clfarron4 (2015-01-23 13:19:57)

GloW_on_dub · 2015-01-23 15:29:08

it is solved after update. Just look in your /home/user/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh:474

  # Check before removing
  if [ "$STEAMROOT" != "" ]; then
    rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*
  fi

Last edited by GloW_on_dub (2015-01-23 15:29:27)

Arch Linux

#1 2015-01-16 16:43:44

[SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#2 2015-01-16 17:19:41

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#3 2015-01-16 17:24:46

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#4 2015-01-16 18:00:25

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#5 2015-01-16 19:24:22

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#6 2015-01-16 19:27:05

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#7 2015-01-16 19:52:06

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#8 2015-01-18 00:29:54

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#9 2015-01-20 22:24:23

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#10 2015-01-21 19:24:18

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#11 2015-01-21 20:22:52

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#12 2015-01-21 20:32:53

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#13 2015-01-22 07:58:23

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#14 2015-01-23 10:22:23

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#15 2015-01-23 12:59:53

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#16 2015-01-23 13:17:23

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#17 2015-01-23 13:19:07

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

#18 2015-01-23 15:29:08

Re: [SOLVED] Possible Serious Steam Bug

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