Hi Everyone,

My Steam client (running on Fedora 26 from RPM fusion) updated today to the August 28th version. This installed a new steam runtime which appears to causing problems with many games (Shadows of Mordor, Mad Max, etc.)

For example when I try to run Mad Max I get the following relevant errors when steam is started from the terminal:

Game update: AppID 234140 "Mad Max", ProcID 32705, IP 0.0.0.0:0
Loaded Config for Local Override Path for App ID 234140: /home/robert/.local/share/Steam//controller_base/empty.vdf
[234140]Non-Steam Controller Configs Enabled: 1
>>> Adding process 32705 for game ID 234140
GameAction [AppID 234140, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp changed task to WaitingGameWindow with ""
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/robert/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/robert/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
pid 32707 != 32706, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
pid 32708 != 32706, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
pid 32709 != 32706, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
pid 32710 != 32706, skipping destruction (fork without exec?)
ERROR: ld.so: object '/home/robert/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32): ignored.
/home/robert/Games/Steam_Library/steamapps/common/Mad Max/bin/MadMax: /lib64/libldap_r-2.4.so.2: no version information available (required by /home/robert/Games/Steam_Library/steamapps/common/Mad Max/bin/../lib/x86_64/libcurl.so.4)
/home/robert/Games/Steam_Library/steamapps/common/Mad Max/bin/MadMax: /lib64/liblber-2.4.so.2: no version information available (required by /home/robert/Games/Steam_Library/steamapps/common/Mad Max/bin/../lib/x86_64/libcurl.so.4)
MadMax: crash reporter initialised with path "/home/robert/.local/share/feral-interactive/Mad Max/crashes"
GameAction [AppID 234140, ActionID 2] : LaunchApp changed task to Completed with ""
>>> Adding process 32706 for game ID 234140
>>> Adding process 32714 for game ID 234140
dbus[32714]: arguments to dbus_type_is_basic() were incorrect, assertion "dbus_type_is_valid (typecode) || typecode == DBUS_TYPE_INVALID" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-signature.c line 323.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.

  D-Bus not built with -rdynamic so unable to print a backtrace
process 32520: arguments to dbus_connection_ref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2656.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
process 32520: arguments to dbus_connection_unref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2794.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
process 32520: arguments to dbus_connection_unref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2794.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
process 32520: arguments to dbus_connection_ref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2656.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
process 32520: arguments to dbus_connection_unref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2794.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
process 32520: arguments to dbus_connection_unref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2794.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
process 32520: arguments to dbus_connection_unref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2794.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
MadMax: dumped to "/home/robert/.local/share/feral-interactive/Mad Max/crashes/3a8b3297-a54a-115c-35e52650-704b0ff2.dmp"
MadMax: crash reporter "/home/robert/Games/Steam_Library/steamapps/common/Mad Max/bin/feral_linux_crash_reporter" launching
Game crashed, if possible email [[email protected]] with the crash file [/home/robert/.local/share/feral-interactive/Mad Max/crashes/3a8b3297-a54a-115c-35e52650-704b0ff2.dmp] and details

My solution was to run steam from the terminal with the following environment variable set:

STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0

The full command to run in steam the background and eliminate any output is:

STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0 steam > /dev/null 2>&1 &

I hope this helps somebody else that was as frustrated as me!

Edit: anybody have any insight into why this solves my problem? The previous version of the Steam client from July 10 worked fine.


Edit2: Somebody in www.reddit.com/r/fedora clarified what's going on:

Steam provides its own copies of some system runtime libraries. In the latest update, they switched to trying to use more of the system libraries by default. Some games also include their own bundled copies of libraries, and they depend on specific versions of other libraries. Steam was trying to resolve those library dependencies using the system copy, but they were either unversioned or not the version it was looking for.

Setting that environment variable tells steam to use all its bundled libraries first, which is why they bundle them in the first place (because they can't be sure of compatibility to the system libs).

I think I have a better understanding now. The game's libcurl.so.4 (shared object library) has an ABI incompatibility with my local host operating system's /lib64/libldap_r-2.4.so.2 and /lib64/liblber-2.4.so.2. By setting the STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0, I can force steam to always use it's local runtime instead of my OS's libraries.

EDIT: New Solution and Better Explanation
So after doing some more research and reading some of the posts here, I believe there is a better solution. The issue actually appears to be with libdbus. After the Aug.28 update, the new steam runtime tries to use more of your local distros copies of libraries, and some games (e.g. feral games) appear not to start anymore.

By using STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0, you're telling Steam to only use the libraries in it's runtime, which is quite old. A better approach is to pin only the libraries that you're actually having problems with, this way you use the newer libraries from your distro when you can, but the few problematic libraries will come from the older steam runtime.

In the case of the Feral titles, libdbus seemed to be casing the problem.

Reading some issue reports on the steam-for-linux github page, people were suggesting to pin libdbus so that steam will always use that specific version. In this case we'll pin the libdbus from the steam runtime.

To pin the 32 bit version do this (note that this was already in place for me):

ln -s ${HOME}/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3 ${HOME}/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_32/libdbus-1.so.3

To pin the 64 bit version do this (note this was NOT in place for me and solved my problem):

ln -s ${HOME}/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdbus-1.so.3 ${HOME}/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/pinned_libs_64/libdbus-1.so.3

This will create symbolic links from the both the 32 bit and 64 bit libdbus-1.so.3 from your steam runtime into the appropriate pinned_libs_xx folders. This ensures that when starting up Steam will always use these versions of libdbus. After doing this you no longer need to use STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0.

I hope this helps!