If you're using Arch Linux or anything based on it (or other rolling update distributions) and you've recently run updates that included freetype2, you might unfortunately notice that Steam is now quite broken.
When loading any part of the Steam client that depends on web views, it will just give you a rather unhelpful black screen. This is obviously a big problem and makes it all quite unusable. So what can you do? Well, if you're comfortable with your package managing you could downgrade freetype2 back to version 2.10.4 but that can then end up breaking future updates that depend on the newer version. Valve are hot on the issue though and they've already put up a fresh Steam Beta with a fix.
Valve contractor Timothee Besset commented on GitHub to say it's "Today's beta update comes with a fairly significant change to the way we setup the runtime environment for the web views. Please test that this addresses the issue on all affected distributions!". So if you're seeing the black-screen issues, try out the latest Steam Beta. Doing so is easy by just loading up Steam settings and then look for the red boxed area shown below:
Arch Linux does at times have issues like this, because updates are constantly rolling so issues end up being found much quicker - which also means by the time other distributions upgrade (like Ubuntu every 6 months) the issues are likely solved by then.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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slaapliedje Sep 3, 2021
Quoting: DebianUserHa, that's when liveCDs come into play :) Speaking of grub, it should be lunch time....Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: DebianUserSpeaking of rescue modes... I am going to give a shout out to Red Hat here. I was playing around with RHEL 8 in a VM to see how it stood up as a desktop / workstation. I did something and then probably shut down before it had finished, so it was in a weird state. But yet choosing the rescue mode from the command line would boot up a full Gnome desktop! I was quite impressed.Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: DebianUserHuh, do you have something weird there? I've been running stable for decades, and haven't had grub break. Also, I mean why would you reboot unless you've updated the kernel? :PQuoting: RaabenI kinda brace myself since some people love to point fingers at things like this and claim that Arch is a bad/buggy/difficult distro. I ran it for many years and something big like this happened maybe once or twice a year and always had a simple fix; it's darn solid. I am pretty sure I had more problems with my distro of choice's last upgrade than my entire Arch days..
I don't know Arch but tu put things into perspective, i'm using Debian, and they have broken grub two times this two last years (on stable), leaving users who have updated at the wrong time with an unbootable device without any warning (have to use another install or live cd, and reinstall grub on the disk).
Of course, this problem has been spotted in derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint...)
So yeah... sh** happens, even on the most stable distros (and on Windows too, of course).
I think only users who have make an update at the wrong time have seen the issue (i hope the bug has been fixed rapidly, as reinstalling grub on the disk was sufficient).
But searching the web for a solution, i found other users with the problem, and one who has stated it was the second time (and it was for me too).
I don't remember the first issue, but the second is here https://www.google.com/search?q=grub_malloc+grub+update&source=lmns&bih=1013&biw=2144&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiKz9jFqeLyAhUI3OAKHXTDCVEQ_AUoAHoECAEQAA
Since that, i keep a old non-updated install on a small partition on another disk, with grub on it, to have another grub/install for rescue, if the same problem happens, i just boot this system, chroot into my main system, and reinstall grub on the main disk.
I must shut down my computer because it is in the same room than my bed :p
Turns out I was playing with enabling fips mode, and it had gone a little sideways, and I just needed to run the command again so it could finish that. But I thought the rescue mode having a sort of 'snapshot' to get a bootable system with full GUI was quite impressive.
Yeah rescue mode is pretty helpful in some cases... but not when updates are breaking grub itself :s
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iliyalesani Sep 3, 2021
I thought this problem was on my end so I've been using Big Picture instead till I get around to fixing it. Thanks!
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Can't say I've hit this problem. I might be in a sweet spot based on when I run updates. Nice to see the news, though, in case I run into it.
Funny but also sad that we started defending Arch before anyone even attacked. Arch is popular enough. We don't need to evangelize! It won't be cool anymore if it's mainstream!
Funny but also sad that we started defending Arch before anyone even attacked. Arch is popular enough. We don't need to evangelize! It won't be cool anymore if it's mainstream!
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Started Steam today. Got the black screen.
Switching to Beta fixed Steam for me, as expected.
First rule of Arch Linux, tell everyone you use Arch Linux:
And as for the discussion on Arch. Been using it for years, after using several other distro's. Besides the detailed documentation, Arch let's me install ONLY the software I want from scratch, and yet still WORKS (including up-to-date software). Haven't found a better distro for personal use, but always open to suggestions. :)
Last edited by Oet_ on 4 September 2021 at 12:43 pm UTC
Switching to Beta fixed Steam for me, as expected.
First rule of Arch Linux, tell everyone you use Arch Linux:
And as for the discussion on Arch. Been using it for years, after using several other distro's. Besides the detailed documentation, Arch let's me install ONLY the software I want from scratch, and yet still WORKS (including up-to-date software). Haven't found a better distro for personal use, but always open to suggestions. :)
Last edited by Oet_ on 4 September 2021 at 12:43 pm UTC
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Just noticed I have a steam update waiting, and tested it. Release notes in the updater show up again. That is with Steam beta on Kubuntu. Just in case someone still reading this :)
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furaxhornyx Sep 5, 2021
Quoting: GuestManjaro (Stable) got updated and now has this problem, Steam Beta fixed it, so thanks for the heads up:)
Thanks for the warning, I was about to update too, I just left the freetype2 ; I will update it when things will be sorted out
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The "regression" is all Steam, not Arch. It's not even freetype that was (still is, on non-beta) the problem, it was their own stupidly bundled libharfbuzz in steam-runtime-heavy and linux runtime soldier. See, the new freetype is no longer compatible with the old harfbuzz API. This is Valve's mistake... what do they think is going to happen? System freetype, old bundled harfbuzz. That's even a circular dependency, freetype linked against harfbuzz, harfbuzz linked against freetype.
The clue was this:
steamwebhelper: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6: undefined symbol: hb_ot_tags_from_script_and_language
That's a harfbuzz symbol. Note that with later beta clients updates, it didn't print this error anywhere on console, so I was lucky to get this clue when the problem first surfaced.
I had upgraded to freetype 2.11 long before Arch did. I keep my systems binary compatible because I compile some things to run on all my systems, so when my other systems (LFS, Slackware) get an upgrade for something like that, all do.
I tried forcing Steam to load my libharfbuzz with LD_PRELOAD and it worked for the UI and the client worked correctly, but bombed out on Proton because it was being overridden in the runtime soldier bwrap container.
So what I ended up doing was dropping in the previous libfreetype.so.6 from my freetype 2.10.4 package and setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH. That worked until Valve finally fixed it with a somewhat newer libharfbuzz (from Dec. 2019 lol... they are still trying to support old Ubuntu) and probably a recompile of the embedded Chrome.
Also note, it was only the 64 bit parts of Steam that had this problem. I used lsof to help me solve this problem and Steam was correctly hooking both lib32-freetype and lib32-harfbuzz from /usr/lib32 and the Steam client does not bundle them.
I think that everyone using Steam on Linux should be using the beta client (to ensure the latest proton bits etc.) but anyone not, that wants to fix this, instead of downgrading freetype, could simply stick their previous libfreetype.so.6 (copy the real library and rename or symlink) to a directory that doesn't have any other libraries and start Steam with "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/directory steam" or better yet, to the wrapper script used to start it (e.g. /usr/bin/steam), "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/directory" which is how I did it.
Last edited by Grogan on 6 September 2021 at 11:41 pm UTC
The clue was this:
steamwebhelper: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6: undefined symbol: hb_ot_tags_from_script_and_language
That's a harfbuzz symbol. Note that with later beta clients updates, it didn't print this error anywhere on console, so I was lucky to get this clue when the problem first surfaced.
I had upgraded to freetype 2.11 long before Arch did. I keep my systems binary compatible because I compile some things to run on all my systems, so when my other systems (LFS, Slackware) get an upgrade for something like that, all do.
I tried forcing Steam to load my libharfbuzz with LD_PRELOAD and it worked for the UI and the client worked correctly, but bombed out on Proton because it was being overridden in the runtime soldier bwrap container.
So what I ended up doing was dropping in the previous libfreetype.so.6 from my freetype 2.10.4 package and setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH. That worked until Valve finally fixed it with a somewhat newer libharfbuzz (from Dec. 2019 lol... they are still trying to support old Ubuntu) and probably a recompile of the embedded Chrome.
Also note, it was only the 64 bit parts of Steam that had this problem. I used lsof to help me solve this problem and Steam was correctly hooking both lib32-freetype and lib32-harfbuzz from /usr/lib32 and the Steam client does not bundle them.
I think that everyone using Steam on Linux should be using the beta client (to ensure the latest proton bits etc.) but anyone not, that wants to fix this, instead of downgrading freetype, could simply stick their previous libfreetype.so.6 (copy the real library and rename or symlink) to a directory that doesn't have any other libraries and start Steam with "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/directory steam" or better yet, to the wrapper script used to start it (e.g. /usr/bin/steam), "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/directory" which is how I did it.
Last edited by Grogan on 6 September 2021 at 11:41 pm UTC
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slaapliedje Sep 5, 2021
Otherwise, short version: if they are going to package one library and leave it old, they should package the other libraries that they depend on.... or just use the system libraries... who would have thought that was a thing? 
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Is there a way to set up this manually?
steam settings seems to not be available on my menu for some weird reason.
steam settings seems to not be available on my menu for some weird reason.
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Quoting: JVargasIs there a way to set up this manually?Family Control enabled maybe?
steam settings seems to not be available on my menu for some weird reason.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/154644928861005330/
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