Xubuntu prompted os-update kills STEAM

[Lebeau]

After a normal & prompted update to certain libraries in the os today, STEAM no longer works, & no games under it work either. I re-installed STEAM, problem remained. So, I ran it in terminal:

"admn@arpitapos:~$ STEAM_RUNTIME=0 steam
Running Steam on ubuntu 12.04 32-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is disabled by the user"

That's all it said. No text followed telling me why or how it got disabled in the 1st place nor what it needs to run as it should. I do not know how to re-enable it. Will someone walk me thru this?

[Lucky_Luke]

Check libraries with ldd maybe? Maybe some lib is missing or symlink is changed.

ldd steam

[Linuxmage]

Ok, so a bit of research has revealed this to be a particularly ugly bug that we are waiting for valve to fix.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/345120/why-doesnt-steam-start

Try the solution suggested here.

This, so far, is all anyone can suggest.

[Lebeau]

Believe it or not, this old dog actually found same site & wondered, but did nothing with it. Thanks Linuxmage, your post made me test it, & sure enough, my pc has this bug. I have manually deleted once, & Steam has now started normally 3 times in a row without issue or needing a manual terminal re-delete. Will I need to re-delete after pc-restart? If so, what would the 2-line terminal command to auto-delete (mentioned in posted thread but not written anywhere) look like? Would you compose it? Should I use it? Thanks again, you're my hero of the day!
:clapping5365:

[Lebeau]

Here's Steam's reply to my trouble-ticket:


"Please complete the steps below to refresh your configuration files for Steam:

Exit Steam.

Please open Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox and type steam://flushconfig
then press Enter. (If asked to allow this website to open a program, please
click 'Allow' or 'OK')

When prompted by Steam to reset your configuration, please click 'OK' to
confirm.

Once done, login to Steam and re-test the issue.

If you have multiple installation folders for games doing this process will
remove them. You will need to add the folders again in Steam so that your games
will appear as installed.

In order to add the folders please do the following:

1. Open Steam
2. Click Steam > Settings (Preferences on Mac)
3. Navigate to the 'Downloads' tab
4. Click the 'Steam Library Folders' button
5. Click on 'Add Library Folder' and add the directory that contains your games
6. Click 'OK'
7. Restart Steam

If the issue persists, make sure your network is optimized for Steam."


Not sure if Steam's approach even works, as the "rm -Rf ~/.steam/steam/appcache" terminal fix offered in that link Linuxmaster posted appears to have fixed this issue & I'm not going to try to fix what currently isn't broken (bad juju). I merely post this reply in the interests of fullest disclosure as Linuxmaster had previously said the "rm -Rf ~/.steam/steam/appcache" was the only known fix. Could be both approaches do the exact same thing but in different ways, idk, all greek to me...