Steam on Slackware
 

The Steam gaming platform has finally found its native way onto Linux!

At the moment there is only a Debian package available here:

http://media.steampowered.com/client...ller/steam.deb

I used mc to unpack the data.tar.gz in the /usr folder and I can startup the Steam installation with:

But it doesn't run after that, I get the following error:

Any ideas?

Is there only a 32-bit client?

Nope - have to have mulitilib. Here's an interesting link:

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD

It's an Ubuntu Package. And I doubt, there will be any other option in the near future.

The Windows version runs fine on Slackware using wine. It sits in $HOME, doesn't need root access and touches nothing in /usr. A native Linux port should at least meet this standard.

Steam = Stupid terrible egregious antisocial malware

IMHO of course :)

Well, there's an absolutely massive Linux Thread which largely consists of people trying to get it to work on non-Ubuntu distros...

There's already an Arch Linux PkGBuild which allegedly works...

Why should an executable binary not reside in /usr? Why should an application with the purpose to install software on your machine not need root access? Why should an application that installs software on your machine not touch /usr? Do you have the same requirements for sbopkg?

Because system-wide application bundles belong to /opt and user-installed application bundles belong to $HOME.

It doesn't need these privileges on Windows for obvious reasons. It completely operates in its own directory.

The question is: Why should I grant root access to a closed DRM BLOB, when it's not needed at all.

See above. The one and only application, which installs software on my machine, is installpkg.

Sbopkg doesn't touch /usr at all. It creates .tgz pkgs in /tmp.

I suggest creating a Ubuntu chroot using debootstrap.

It looks like the client fails to initialize on Slackware because it does not find pulseaudio... it also needs some magic to let it find a 32-bit libnss3.so on a multilib system, and a symlink in /usr/bin to /sbin/pidof so that the startup script can check for a running Steam client.

And since this is all 32-bit stuff I will have to create compat32 packages for pulseaudio and its few dependencies to try it out.
I will upload a rough steam package soon. I have no SlackBuild yet but I stuck a description of the commands to package the binaries inside its doc directory.

Too bad I entered "Other" instead of "Ubuntu" as the OS I am running... or else I might have gotten into that beta ;-)

Eric

I can't believe this day is actually here.. I haven't had a chance to download the .deb, and like AlienBob selected 'other' on my beta application so I think I'll be waiting a while.

Looks like a few hurdles to jump over, but nothing we can't sort out.. I'm really looking forward to playing first class games natively!

This is how I created a crude package - note that I run Slackware 14:
I then created this symlink:
And on a multilib system you need to have this variable exported in order to make Steam find the 32-bit seamonkey-solibs compat32 package:
And then of course, you will need pulseaudio and is dependencies speex and json-c, all of those are on http:/slackbuilds.org/
Note that before building pulseaudio, the README instructs you to create a "pulse" user and group:
Eric

Nice work, Bob.

But I'm afraid, this effort isn't going anywhere: Any Steam App available for Linux in the future will assume, that it will be executed on Ubuntu only and will fail miserably elsewhere. And as a Debian derivative, Ubuntu doesn't support LSB (which requires RPM) very well.

So we have 2012, when this is released it will be 2013, but I still have to infect my system with 32 bit libraries? And as if that wouldn't be enough they decided to make it dependent on the soundsystem with the highest latencies out there?
Wow, Valve, I thought you can do this better than that.

Exactly my thoughts on that.

There are numerous possibilites:

1. After solving their differences with Microsoft regarding the Windows 8 Store, they cancel the port. (They wouldn't be the first company only flirting with Linux for a better bargaining position.) This is IMHO the most likely result.

2. Their project fails like Ubuntu itself failed reaching its main goal. Some Ubuntu fans occasionally play their Valve games on Linux but nothing happens beyond that.

3. They succeed in steering a substantial mass of their customer base over to Ubuntu. Like with every mass product, you then get the worst conceivable technical solution, you can imagine. This also has the potential to kill other minor distributions, like Freedesktop.org is currently killing BSD.

Nevertheless, this Beta explicitly targeting ubuntu 12.04 does not mean that other distros are being ignored. Let's just wait and see how this evolves, shall we?

In the meantime, this is the list of packages you will need to add to a 32-bit Slackware:
OpenAL (implements the OpenAL 3D audio API)
json-c (dependency for pulseaudio)
speex (dependency for pulseaudio)
pulseaudio

And if you are running Slackware 64-bit with multilib you will have to create compat32 packages of the following (apart from what my "basic" set of compat32 packages already installs):

OpenAL-compat32
json-c-compat32
speex-compat32
pulseaudio-compat32
flac-compat32 (part of Slackware)
libogg-compat32 (part of Slackware)
libvorbis-compat32 (part of Slackware)

You can find packages for these deps here (I will upload the steamclient itself too in due time): http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/pe...amclient/deps/

The next hurdle is that Steam seems to be overloaded, sometimes I get the error "can't contact steam server" and now I am waiting for the access code in my mailbox because Steam noticed that this is a new computer and wants me to acknowledge this.

To be continued...

Eric

Eric

Great work alien bob :)

I was too lazy to build compat32 pkgs for pulseaudio and so on.
Now I can just download your packages, thank you very much!

Beggars can't be choosers I suppose. I love Linux and I love gaming. It sort of makes sense for them to pick the most mainstream distro as a static target.. I'm not thrilled about pulse or 32bit libs either, but I'll live with it if I can play Valve games on my Slack box.

Based on what I'm hearing in this thread, it sounds like Desura will remain the more Slackware-friendly platform.

The steam client works except when you try to directly open the store or access a game.
This works from the console:
but this requires a Steam for Linux closed beta account (the client shuts down after you login with an account which is not part of the beta).
If you run this instead:
then you at least have the opportunity to look around on Steam, search the store for Linux games (more than I expected) but alas, it is impossible to download/install or start a game.

When I try to start Team Fortress 2 (which according to the store is available for Linux) using the commandline then I get a GTK error which I have not yet found a reason or a fix for:
and after that, the program hangs - probably crashed, because of this text when you Ctrl-C and start the client again:
Eric

Perhaps, but then again I could not find a game there that I would want to play. That site obviously borrowed its identity from Steam...

Eric

Glad to see Steam has a Linux port finally and kudos to AlienBOB once again for his always helpful insights.

Now all we need is a SlackBuild script to repackage it to .tgz format, list all the dependencies, and we're good to go.

Just been trying this out and unfortunately it doesn't seem to like me much :-

I did however create a nice SlackBuild
SlackBuild http://pastebin.com/u6ssp0tB
doinst.sh http://pastebin.com/bJWKwm8s
slack-desc http://pastebin.com/fqkHHDNz

The pulseaudio connect error may be caused by the fact that you have not started the rc.pulseaudio which was installed along with the pulseaudio package.
The segmentation fault is more obscure. I had that too, and could resolve it once I had installed all missing 32-bit libraries (I am on a multilib system).

I was able to play the demo of World of Goo - which seems to be the only Linux game you can activate if you are not invited for the closed beta.

Eric

I've got this on Slackware 14 64bit
steam steam://store
ILocalize::AddFile() failed to load file "public/steambootstrapper_english.txt".
X Error of failed request: BadName (named color or font does not exist)
Major opcode of failed request: 45 (X_OpenFont)
Serial number of failed request: 12
Current serial number in output stream: 13
Dear Bob i follow your instructions from previous page to create a steam package,i have a multilib system http://slackware.com/~alien/multilib/
download and install this http://taper.alienbase.nl/mirrors/pe...eamclient/deps
Sorry for my bad english i'm from Bulgaria
/etc/rc.d/rc.pulseaudio start
E: [pulseaudio] core-util.c: Home directory / not ours.
Starting pulseaudio...
W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to open cookie file '//.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory
W: [pulseaudio] authkey.c: Failed to load authorization key '//.pulse-cookie': No such file or directory
No protocol specified
E: [pulseaudio] client-conf-x11.c: xcb_connection_has_error() returned true
E: [autospawn] core-util.c: Home directory / not ours.
W: [autospawn] lock-autospawn.c: Cannot access autospawn lock.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Failed to acquire autospawn lock

Are we supposed to install both pulseaudio packages?

The compat32 one does not contain the rc.pulseaudio file, only the pulseaudio-2.0-i486-1_Sbo package has it. In fact the compat32 package has none of the /etc tree in it.

I haven't used my Steam account in years, probably won't for more years either. How many games will even run? No one uses OGL anymore except id.

Good question, I installed both and started the pulseaudio server... let's wait for others to give their feedback.

Eric

I think you are not correct there... the DirectX API is only used on Windows. Everybody who wants to be cross-platform (including Android) uses OpenGL or OpenGL ES.

Eric

It looks like you created your pulse user wrongly. I wrote this a bit different from the README instructions on slackbuilds.org...
Note the extra "-m" which takes care of the creation of the directory as well as setting the proper ownership.

Eric

And the Source engine. And the Unity3D engine. And the Unigine engine. And the Unreal engine (any version, even Unreal 3).
In fact, most engines nowadays are made to run on mobile devices also. There is no Direct3D on mobile devices (except Windows devices of course).

Im running multilib and have only installed compat32 packages. Im not in the beta so i cant try source games, but i do have Rochard and SPAZ from the HumbleBundle of which i only tried SPAZ.

EDIT: Rochard does not launch. I get error message "Failed to start game (missing executable.)"

That's an interesting idea. Have you personally gotten Steam working using this method?

Yes i did it that way and when type /etc/rc.d/rc.pulseaudio start i've got this Starting pulseaudio...
No protocol specified
E: [pulseaudio] client-conf-x11.c: xcb_connection_has_error() returned true
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.

When i type pulseaudio Inconsistency detected by ld.so: dl-open.c: 667: _dl_open: Assertion `_dl_debug_initialize (0, args.nsid)->r_state == RT_CONSISTENT' failed! This is the error

I don't think you need to start pulseaudio, it just needs to be installed
because steam is linked to it. I have switched in the steam settings audio
to alsa and the gui works fine (including the big picture mode).

But I have no games available to try :(

when i type steam in terminal i've got this error
ILocalize::AddFile() failed to load file "public/steambootstrapper_english.txt".
X Error of failed request: BadName (named color or font does not exist)
Major opcode of failed request: 45 (X_OpenFont)
Serial number of failed request: 12
Current serial number in output stream: 13

Ok tried installing those packages and no go, then I turned networkmanager on and it stays running but it seems to stall with "Checking for available updates..." which could just be a steam issue.

So I would say that having networkmanager running is a dependency as well.

EDIT .... restarting steam and it is seg faulting again so back to the drawing board.
EDIT2 pulseaudio is missing a dependency libsamplerate, checked Eric'c multilib repository and there is no ready made package (Eric you will need to add a package for this)

I read somewhere on reddit that you need bitstream-vera ttf font.
So if you don't have it already get it here: http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...itstream-vera/

Right, the client is incompatible with nouvea, I had to install the nvidia blob.

LATE EDIT

A game that does work is the World of Goo demo.

Game ID 22010

If you get the store page the link to install the PC demo works.

It didnt help

You missed that in one of my earlier posts I guess ;-)

I uploaded a few changes to my multilib repository. I have added ap/flac ap/sqlite l/libogg l/libsamplerate l/libvorbis to the massconvert32.sh script. These are the Slackware packages which will be needed if you want run the Linux version of Steam. I also refreshed all the *compat32 packages for Slackware 14.0 for those who do not want to run massconvert32.sh and just want to download & install packages.

The upload is currently underway to the server.

Eric

This is the otput from strace


strace -E LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/ -e trace=open /home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/steam
[ Process PID=13985 runs in 32 bit mode. ]
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/tls/i686/sse2/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/tls/i686/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/tls/sse2/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/tls/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/i686/sse2/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/i686/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/sse2/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/libX11.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libm.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/libm.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/libdl.so.2", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libstdc++.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libpthread.so.0", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/libpthread.so.0", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libxcb.so.1", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/libxcb.so.1", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libXau.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/libXau.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libXdmcp.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/libgcc_s.so.1", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/dev/urandom", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_max_freq", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/proc/cpuinfo", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("/proc/cpuinfo", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/share/locale/locale.alias", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_IDENTIFICATION", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules.cache", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_MEASUREMENT", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_TELEPHONE", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_ADDRESS", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_NAME", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_PAPER", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/SYS_LC_MESSAGES", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_MONETARY", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_TIME", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_NUMERIC", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("/usr/lib/locale/bg_BG.utf8/LC_CTYPE", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
open("./public/steambootstrapper_english.txt", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("./public/steambootstrapper_english.txt", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
ILocalize::AddFile() failed to load file "public/steambootstrapper_english.txt".
open("steam.cfg", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("Steam.cfg", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("package/beta", O_RDONLY) = 3
open("/home/tux/.steam/root/ubuntu12_32/crashhandler.so", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/tux/.Xauthority", O_RDONLY) = 4
open("/usr/share/X11/XErrorDB", O_RDONLY) = 4
open("/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias", O_RDONLY) = 4
open("/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.dir", O_RDONLY) = 4
open("/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias", O_RDONLY) = 4
open("/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.dir", O_RDONLY) = 4
open("/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.alias", O_RDONLY) = 4
open("/usr/share/X11/locale/locale.dir", O_RDONLY) = 4
X Error of failed request: BadName (named color or font does not exist)
Major opcode of failed request: 45 (X_OpenFont)
Serial number of failed request: 12
Current serial number in output stream: 13

Too bloody happy that I finally got it to work more like it, and I was pretty tired and cranky by the time I figured out it was the video drivers causing the problem.

I also noticed but haven't posted that pulseaudio also requires libudev from udev.

Well crud! I can't even get the page where one joins to load correctly (https://store.steampowered.com/join/). None of the javascript things work like the pulldown menu for 'secret question' or the 'refresh' of the weird letter/numbers thing. I've tried it with seamonkey, firefox and opera.

I've got jre-7u9-i586-1 installed on my slackware 14 system (32 bit).

The java *seems* to work on other websites, but is there someplace I can check to make sure?

Their website doesn't work right most of the time in Windows either. I think they expect everyone to be running a Cray, with a full render farm for graphics and OC-192 connections and Windows Home Premium :p

Slackware64 14.0 multilib here, using Firefox as my webbrowser of choice, and I never had any of the issues you are describing. Only difference (but that should not make any difference for the Steam website) is that I am using OpenJDK instead of the Oracle binaries you are using.

Eric

Will installing these PulseAudio pacakages mess up my ALSA set up? I prefer and need to use ALSA for a few reasons.

It didn't mess up my alsa as far as I know.

No, the pulseaudio package will not be used by anything in Slackware. In the Steam client and Steam games you will probably have to configure the audio properties to use ALSA through pulseaudio but I have not yet tried getting sound to function.

Eric