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Hello everyone,
I am struggling to get SteamVR (Valve Index) running on my Arch Linux system. Initially, I encountered Error 497, which I managed to resolve, but I am now stuck on Error 498: "Failed to lease display".
System Specs:
OS: Arch Linux Kernel: Latest Stable
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT (RDNA3)
Desktop: GNOME 49 (Wayland) Mesa: 25.3.1-2 (also tested with downgrades)
HMD: Valve Index The Issue: SteamVR starts and detects the HMD (Valve Index) and the display/EDIDs correctly. However, as soon as the vrcompositor attempts to initialize, it fails with Error 498. The logs indicate that the DRM lease cannot be acquired.
Troubleshooting steps already taken:
Fixed SSL/Library Conflicts: Initially had Error 497 due to OpenSSL "cannot resolve" errors in vrmonitor. Fixed this by symlinking system libssl and libcrypto into the Steam runtime folders (ubuntu12_32 and ubuntu12_64). This moved the error from 497 to 498.
Environment Variables: Tested with
VR_FORCE_DRM_LEASE=1and
WLR_DRM_LEASING=1in SteamVR launch options.
GNOME Settings: Verified that GNOME 49 should support DRM leasing. Attempted to force mutter settings via gsettings.
Mesa Downgrade: Downgraded mesa, lib32-mesa, and vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers to previous versions from cache to rule out regressions in 25.3.
Compositor Test: Installed and tested under KDE Plasma (Wayland). Encountered the exact same Error 498, suggesting the issue might be lower-level (AMDGPU kernel driver or Mesa) rather than GNOME-specific.
SteamVR Versions: Tested both "Stable" and "Beta" branches of SteamVR.
Log Analysis: In vrserver.txt, the system detects the Index HMD, IMU, and EDIDs (80Hz to 144Hz) perfectly. However, the vrcompositor disconnects immediately after start:
[Info] - Warning: vrclient connection from .../vrcompositor ... [Info] - Socket closed [Info] - Process 26613: vrcompositor disconnected ... Current Status: I have avoided changing kernel parameters (like amdgpu.vm_block_size=10) so far. Since the issue persists across different compositors (GNOME/KDE) and after Mesa downgrades
....I am wondering if this is a known regression in the current Arch kernel's AMDGPU driver regarding DRM leasing for RDNA3 cards. It ran flawless before the last system update and some steam VR updates ago.
Has anyone with a 7000-series card found a fix for this recently? Any help is appreciated!
Last edited by prokrastinator (2025-12-18 23:35:11)
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I also have a 7900 XT and an Index, but I use KDE Plasma (on Wayland).
I haven't launched SteamVR for a while, so I did now, and I got error 497 "failed to connect to window manager".
After I downgraded all the Mesa packages as described in below link, I was able to launch SteamVR successfully:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamV … 3629612863
Initially had Error 497 due to OpenSSL "cannot resolve" errors in vrmonitor. Fixed this by symlinking system libssl and libcrypto into the Steam runtime folders (ubuntu12_32 and ubuntu12_64). This moved the error from 497 to 498.
I'd wager a guess that this is not a proper fix for error 497, and you're just getting a different error because of the crypto libraries mismatch (the error codes don't have to go in order, so hitting error 498 doesn't necessarily mean that 497 is resolved).
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THANKS A LOT
That helped!
It seems that my first downgrade attempt was incomplete.
As described in your link - thats the way to do it.
cd /var/cache/pacman/pkg
pacman -U ./mesa-1\:25.2.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst ./lib32-mesa-1\:25.2.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst ./lib32-vulkan-mesa-device-select-1\:25.2.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst ./lib32-vulkan-radeon-1\:25.2.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst ./vulkan-mesa-device-select-1\:25.2.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst ./vulkan-radeon-1\:25.2.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
Last edited by prokrastinator (2025-12-19 00:12:50)
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