Arch Linux

ArcKatsu

Member

Registered: 2024-08-20

Posts: 11

Steam Hangs Early In Startup

2 or 3 days ago, Steam stopped opening on my arch device, and I have been trying to figure out how to fix it. I tried running steam through terminal and all I see is:

steam.sh[4631]: Running Steam on arch rolling 64-bit
steam.sh[4631]: STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically

I've had this issue quite a few times over a few installs and I can never figure out how to resolve the issue, the only way I've consistently managed to fix it is by completely wiping the OS and reinstalling everything except for one time when I did a few things and it suddenly fixed itself but stupidly I didn't write any of it down and have never been able to reproduce.

Here are the things I've tried this time:
Checking ps aux and killing every steam-related process before trying to run steam.
Restarting PC.
Running steam --reset.
steam://flushconfig.
Reinstalling Steam using -Syu, after deleting the entire ~/.local/share/Steam folder as well as ~/.steam.
Trying to run with STEAM_RUNTIME=0.
Trying steam-native-runtime package.
Running ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam directly and installing any lib32 packages that cause errors. Through this method, I ended up hitting a wall when it kept crashing after outputting the following:

src/steamUI/Main.cpp (2325) : !"Fatal Error: Could not load module 'bin/vgui2_s.dll'"

Any information or ideas would be very welcome, I can provide any additional necessary information.

Last edited by ArcKatsu (2025-10-07 15:53:37)

gromit

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From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 1,309

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Re: Steam Hangs Early In Startup

Which steam version are you using? (pacman -Q steam)

ArcKatsu

Member

Registered: 2024-08-20

Posts: 11

Re: Steam Hangs Early In Startup

Currently using 1.0.0.84-1.

ArcKatsu

Member

Registered: 2024-08-20

Posts: 11

Re: Steam Hangs Early In Startup

Also, to clarify, the flatpak version opens fine, but it's a massive pain to use that with non-steam games, which is why I want to get the multilib version working.

ArcKatsu

Member

Registered: 2024-08-20

Posts: 11

Re: Steam Hangs Early In Startup

I don't know if this is a permanent fix but realizing that the flatpak version must have working binaries, I copied the flatpak version's ubuntu12_32 folder into ~/.local/share/Steam and now the normal version is running.

This seems like a really hacked solution so I'm not sure I should mark as solved since the root of the issue wasn't discovered.

gromit

Administrator

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 1,309

Website

Re: Steam Hangs Early In Startup

Could you also try the .85 version that I just put into the stable repos?

ArcKatsu

Member

Registered: 2024-08-20

Posts: 11

Re: Steam Hangs Early In Startup

Could you also try the .85 version that I just put into the stable repos?

Tried it just now after completely wiping the ~/.local/share/Steam folder. Running steam for the first time downloaded and installed the steam client package, but it wouldn't open any more after that. Running it in terminal produced the exact same output as in my original post, where it just hangs after saying steam runtime is enabled.