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Deus 9 Jul @ 11:53am
Steam Suddenly Stopped Working
I hope this is the right place for this. If not I would appreciate it if someone would redirect me to the appropriate forum.

Sometime recently Steam stopped working for me. I discovered this last Wednesday when I went to play Tabletop Simulator. Steam starts, it shows up in ps, it appears as an icon in my panel, but no UI shows up. I have tried running each of my installed games, both from my Applications Menu from the panel notification icon, and none of them work. I was hoping someone here might have an idea of what is wrong and how to fix it.

ps example:

user@machine:~$ ps -u user | grep steam 43668 pts/0 00:00:29 steam 43772 pts/0 00:00:00 steam-runtime-l 49234 ? 00:00:00 steam-runtime-s

I ran steam from the command line and got this output (lightly edited for anonymity):

user@machine:~$ steam steam.sh[43517]: Running Steam on ubuntu 22.04 64-bit steam.sh[43517]: STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically setup.sh[43587]: Steam runtime environment up-to-date! steam.sh[43517]: Steam client's requirements are satisfied [2024-07-09 11:25:00] Startup - updater built Jun 20 2024 17:13:49 [2024-07-09 11:25:00] Startup - Steam Client launched with: '/home/user/.steam/debian-installation/ubuntu12_32/steam' '-srt-logger-opened' '-nominidumps' '-nobreakpad' 07/09 11:25:00 minidumps folder is set to /tmp/dumps 07/09 11:25:00 Init: Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1718904662)/tid(43668) [2024-07-09 11:25:00] Loading cached metrics from disk (/home/user/.steam/debian-installation/package/steam_client_metrics.bin) [2024-07-09 11:25:00] Using the following download hosts for Public, Realm steamglobal [2024-07-09 11:25:00] 1. https://client-update.akamai.steamstatic.com, /, Realm 'steamglobal', weight was 1000, source = 'update_hosts_cached.vdf' [2024-07-09 11:25:00] 2. https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com, /client/, Realm 'steamglobal', weight was 1, source = 'update_hosts_cached.vdf' [2024-07-09 11:25:00] 3. https://cdn.steamstatic.com, /client/, Realm 'steamglobal', weight was 1, source = 'baked in' [2024-07-09 11:25:00] Verifying installation... [2024-07-09 11:25:00] Verification complete UpdateUI: skip show logo Steam logging initialized: directory: /home/user/.steam/debian-installation/logs XRRGetOutputInfo Workaround: initialized with override: 0 real: 0xf3c959c0 XRRGetCrtcInfo Workaround: initialized with override: 0 real: 0xf3c941f0 CAppInfoCacheReadFromDiskThread took 71 milliseconds to initialize Steam Runtime Launch Service: starting steam-runtime-launcher-service Steam Runtime Launch Service: steam-runtime-launcher-service is running pid 43772 bus_name=com.steampowered.PressureVessel.LaunchAlongsideSteam BRefreshApplicationsInLibrary 1: 1ms [2024-07-09 11:27:01] Background update loop checking for update. . . [2024-07-09 11:27:01] Checking for available updates... [2024-07-09 11:27:01] Downloading manifest: https://client-update.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam_client_ubuntu12?t=1544283033 [2024-07-09 11:27:02] Manifest download: send request [2024-07-09 11:27:02] Manifest download: waiting for download to finish [2024-07-09 11:27:02] Manifest download: finished [2024-07-09 11:27:02] Download skipped: /steam_client_ubuntu12?t=1544283033 version 1718904662, installed version 1718904662, existing pending version 0 [2024-07-09 11:27:02] Nothing to do

I tried looking in
/home/user/.steam/debian-installation/logs
to see if I could solve my own problem but there is, frankly, too much information for me to puzzle it out.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled steam with

sudo apt remove steam sudo apt install steam

to no avail.

I have not made any hardware changes recently. My graphics card is a GeForce GTX 570 and I am running the proprietary NVidia driver version 390.157. I have updated my software via
sudo apt update
and
sudo apt upgrade
but I don't think the driver has changed in a long time. The date of release, according to NVidia, is 2022.11.22.

I'm running Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS, and if it matters my DE is Xfce.

Could you help me get this working again, please?
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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments
Zyro 9 Jul @ 12:02pm 
I'd try to move ~/.steam away.
#1
Deus 9 Jul @ 12:13pm 
Originally posted by Zyro:
I'd try to move ~/.steam away.

Thank you! I tried
mv .steam .steam.bak
and then ran steam in the terminal again. It looked like Steam reinstalled, and the installation windows showed up during this re-installation, but the main window didn't afterwards and my games still won't run.
Last edited by Deus; 9 Jul @ 12:18pm
#2
Zyro 9 Jul @ 12:14pm 
Is it an all black window or no window at all?
#3
Deus 9 Jul @ 12:17pm 
There is no window at all.
#4
Xenophobe 9 Jul @ 12:41pm 
just curious, what's the chance of an update to the new steam client no longer supporting the older NVidia driver version 390.157? I don't have an nvidia gpu or I'd test it myself.
#5
Deus 9 Jul @ 12:57pm 
Originally posted by Xenophobe:
just curious, what's the chance of an update to the new steam client no longer supporting the older NVidia driver version 390.157? I don't have an nvidia gpu or I'd test it myself.

I'm not sure, nor am I sure how to test it with my hardware. 390.157 is the latest release for my graphics card.

I've been messing around and trying to run my games directly by just finding the appropriate executable at
~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/<game>/<executable>
and have discovered that I can run some of my games, at least as long as steam is also running, but this is not ideal.

If anyone else reads this and is willing to help I would appreciate it.
#6
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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments
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Date Posted: 9 Jul @ 11:53am
Posts: 6

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