[SOLVED] Steam Client Segmentation Fault

Question

The Steam client crashes with a segmentation fault when attempting to run "STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam".
This wouldn't be so much of an issue if disabling the runtime wasn't required by SimpleScreenRecorder to inject it's libraries into steam games.
I've run steam through gdb with runtime disabled, here are a few errors that stand out:
/home/buildbot/buildslave_steam/steam_rel_client_ubuntu12_linux/build/src/vgui2/src/../vgui_surfacelib/FontManager.cpp (276) : Assertion Failed: descs.Count() >= 1
/home/buildbot/buildslave_steam/steam_rel_client_ubuntu12_linux/build/src/vgui2/src/../vgui_surfacelib/FontManager.cpp 276 Assertion Failed: descs.Count() >= 1
Program received signal SIGTRAP, Trace/breakpoint trap.
0xf4ccfd87 in AssertMsgImplementation ()
from /home/bigstiffy/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/libtier0_s.so
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0xf7bfae86 in __strlen_sse2_bsf () from /usr/lib32/libc.so.6
Requested Force create but SharedObjectMutex already created
Forced create but already created for SharedObjectEvent
Forced create but already created for SharedObjectEvent
After a few hours of looking for answers, it seems that Steam requires an older version of lib32-glibc than what is currently installed,
although continues to functions so long as runtime is enabled by default. Running steam with default settings through gdb showed no
errors regarding either "libtier0_s.so" or "libc.so.6".
Is there a way to obtain an older package of lib32-glibc from the repo to test if this is the culprit?
Building and compiling glibc from source is just a little bit outside my realm of understanding.
Last edited by bigstiffy (2015-04-18 02:02:27)

Answer 1

Also following some information from another thread, I ran
STEAM_RUNTIME=0 strace -o tmp steam; head tmp
And got this output:
execve("/usr/bin/steam", ["steam"], [/* 32 vars */]) = 0
brk(0) = 0x1c89000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=242411, ...}) = 0
mmap(NULL, 242411, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7fb6211bb000
close(3) = 0
open("/usr/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0`\1\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = 832
fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1984416, ...}) = 0
So the Steam client is looking for ld.so.preload where it doesn't exist, and accessing the 64bit glibc library.
I think that when Steam runs with runtime disabled, it is supposed to use the 32bit libraries, but it doesn't search
in /usr/lib32 when the runtime is disabled. I rolled back lib32-glibc to 2.20-2 (Dec 1st, 04) and there was no change.
Any ideas?