[SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

arska3 · 2022-03-18 22:50:40

I have had this problem for many months now. The client fully works, but sometimes when switching for example to Library, Store, or a Steam profile, the content part of the client shows only a dark gray solid color, except the top-left corner has a small rectangle that is see-through.

https://i.imgur.com/inzOwJH.png

Note the blue rectangle top-left. The see-through area is always that size and shape, without exception.

Switching back-and-forth of the views gets rid of this "overlay"(?) and this is what I have been doing as a workaround. I have a strong desire to troubleshoot this though because this happens constantly and it's an irritating experience.

There is also another, less disruptive way this can occur:

Sometimes only a full-width, but narrow in height, piece is obstructed at the bottom of the client:

https://i.imgur.com/l4e64Wb.png

The bottom stripe can sometimes (more rarely) be white, like this:

https://i.imgur.com/Gc08uie.png

These are the only three ways that it happens for me.

Important to note:

There was an earlier issue that the Steam client was completely unusable due to a black screen, with the issue linked to freetype2 package. Here is what I found back then to fix that (Sept. 2021):

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/09/s … ix/page=3/

It was resolved by either downgrading freetype2 or opting for a Steam Beta (using the Beta for a while fixed that for me). What I want to clarify is that my problem here is not the same as this older issue. I've looked around for a long time but haven't been able to find a fix.

Launching Steam via terminal, I get these warnings:

Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1647446817)

and

(steam:294133): LIBDBUSMENU-GLIB-WARNING **: Trying to remove a child that doesn't believe we're it's parent.

These don't seem relevant as far as I've seen.

I'm using standalone Openbox window manager (no Desktop Environment). I can give other info as needed. Thanks for reading

Last edited by arska3 (2022-05-31 16:42:35)

V1del · 2022-03-19 04:27:02

Please don't embed huge images directly and just link to them

Which graphics card/driver are you using here? If intel and you have xf86-video-intel installed remove xf86-video-intel.

arska3 · 2022-03-20 00:44:37

Intel HD Graphics 620

Yes turns out I had xf86-video-intel installed, removed it now. Also saw I had xf86-video-vesa installed, which I don't think is intentional for my system so I removed that too.

Sadly the issue still persists in Steam. Now knowing it might be related to intel drivers I'm reading these Arch wiki pages more in-depth:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/xorg
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/intel_graphics

This catches my eye:

Note: Some (Debian & Ubuntu, Fedora, KDE) recommend not installing the xf86-video-intel driver, and instead falling back on the modesetting driver for Gen4 and newer GPUs (GMA 3000 from 2006 and newer). See [1], [2], Xorg#Installation, and modesetting(4). However, the modesetting driver can cause problems such as Chromium Issue 370022 and vsync jitter/video stutter in mpv.

Is it enough just removing xf86-video-intel or should I read up on the modesetting driver?

V1del · 2022-03-20 12:13:58

It's enough to remove xf86-video-intel it should automatically fall back to the modesetting driver, check your xorg log in doubt. (... after a relevant restart of xorg of course)

However if that doesn't fix things then the problem might lie somewhere else, do you see any messages in regards to the i915 module in dmesg when this corruption/issue happens? FWIW steam in general often has a few issues like those, another suggestion I'd have is checking behaviour with e.g. steam-native to rule out an issue with the standard runtime or so.

arska3 · 2022-03-26 15:17:20

Thanks for helping me out, sorry for the couple days' delay but I tried out your suggestions now.

Sadly they don't give much clue: dmesg only shows audit type messages which I doubt are useful?

Looks like launching native-runtime wasn't part of the multilib/steam package so I installed multilib/steam-native-runtime and can launch with steam-native on command line. Again sadly the behavior is exactly the same, down to the console output (unhelpful warnings). Corruption precisely the same in runtime vs. native.

It feels pretty hard to find a clue. Let me know if I can try anything else

seth · 2022-03-26 21:41:33

dmesg only shows audit type messages which I doubt are useful?

If the ringbuffer is flooded w/ audits (what's not a healthy sign, but llikely unrelated) check the system journal.

Have you tried a different GTK theme? (This doesn't looks like a graphics error but a rendering one)

arska3 · 2022-04-03 08:48:30

Okay, I am learning something about the audit messages. Doing some googling I see that some people simply opt to turn auditing off. However it does seem like a lot of audit messages are put out in dmesg (maybe unhealthy as you say?), maybe I'll be able to see what outputs them so much, I can see a pid and stuff. But yep this is most likely separate issue, if it even is an issue . That's a bit unclear to me.

Thanks, good suggestion about the GTK theme. I had definitely messed with GTK theming settings somewhere near this started happening. I used materia-light before (link to repo) but as time went on I started having more and more issues with it (LibreOffice being the worst). Switched to Adwaita.

However it may be unrelated too since switching back to Materia-Light doesn't resolve the steam rendering issue. I'm trying to look at anything else related to GTK theme. I have used LxAppearance as well as manually editing config files so some mistake is a possibility.

New finding:

Also moving or resizing the steam client window gets rid of the dark gray rectangles. I hadn't noticed this before.

seth · 2022-04-03 13:23:41

Redraw artifacts from a previously/briefly occluding window?

I'm using standalone Openbox window manager

Try running "xcompmgr" on top of that - do the same artifacts remain?

arska3 · 2022-04-10 16:05:23

Yea looking at the compositor was a good idea - I have been using picom on top of Openbox and as I see it is a fork originating from xcompmgr.

There was no luck with the steam issue though, nothing in regards to compositor has any effect, but while I was at this I managed to fix another completely unrelated issue, just a minor thing with setting the wallpaper... so that's great.

I made sure to try these:
1. Disable picom (run steam with no compositor on)
2. Replace picom with xcompmgr (try a different compositor)

That was good to rule out since I did have an issue with picom at one point where some shaped windows (as an example, Xteddy) had a rectangular shadow, but turning it off affected Picture-in-Picture windows where I did want to have the shadow on. I have some settings for that in the picom conf file, but looks like yet again Steam issue is about something else.

arska3 · 2022-05-31 16:41:57

Hello, looks like this was resolved for me:

Simply after running steam-runtime --reset (or steam --reset as steam is symlink to steam-runtime) I don't get the window 'artifacts' anymore.

My approach to a "full reset and try again" was always to sudo pacman -Rns the package and reinstall but I didn't know about this command line flag

Kind of unsatisfying in that the cause of the bug is still unknown but looks like the --reset option is worth trying for any generic steam issue.

Thanks!

Arch Linux

#1 2022-03-18 22:50:40

[SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#2 2022-03-19 04:27:02

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#3 2022-03-20 00:44:37

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#4 2022-03-20 12:13:58

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#5 2022-03-26 15:17:20

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#6 2022-03-26 21:41:33

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#7 2022-04-03 08:48:30

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#8 2022-04-03 13:23:41

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#9 2022-04-10 16:05:23

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

#10 2022-05-31 16:41:57

Re: [SOLVED]Steam client obstructed by dark gray when switching views/tabs

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