Steam Runtime breaking pulseaudio on Kubuntu 12.10 amd64

[sulix]

The latest build of steam has many games no-longer starting unless STEAM_RUNTIME=0 is set: the games usually just hang with a blank screen. I've been using DEFCON as my test game, but it seems to affect others as well.

A quick poke around shows it hanging in pa_mainloop_poll in libpulse, via the alsa plugin. I'm using pulseaudio, so this should work. Perhaps a mismatch between the pulse protocol in the version of pulse in steam-runtime and that in ubuntu 12.10? I wouldn't have thought so, but anything's possible.

For completeness' sake, I should point out that I'm on the xorg-edgers stack, with the binary nVidia driver and 'pulseaudio 2.1'.

Note: while writing this up, I discovered that it affects the Steam System Info page, which is also crashing within pulseaudio when STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled. The system info here is taken from steam running with the runtime disabled.

-- David

---

gdb session:
david@garg:~/Steam/SteamApps/common/Defcon$ ~/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/run.sh gdb ./defcon.bin.x86
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/david/Steam/SteamApps/common/Defcon/defcon.bin.x86
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
[New Thread 0xf5bc7b40 (LWP 13477)]
[New Thread 0xeb48ab40 (LWP 13482)]
[Thread 0xeb48ab40 (LWP 13482) exited]
^C
Program received signal SIGINT, Interrupt.
0xf7fdb430 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
(gdb) thread apply all bt

Thread 2 (Thread 0xf5bc7b40 (LWP 13477)):
#0 0xf7fdb430 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1 0xf7d82d88 in recvfrom () at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/socket.S:97
#2 0x081d580c in NetSocketListener::StartListening(void* ()(NetUdpPacket)) ()
#3 0x081271a6 in ListenThread(void*) ()
#4 0xf7d7bd4c in start_thread (arg=0xf5bc7b40) at pthread_create.c:308
#5 0xf7b77dde in clone () at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/clone.S:130

Thread 1 (Thread 0xf5bc9700 (LWP 13474)):
#0 0xf7fdb430 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1 0xf7b697b0 in ppoll (fds=0x8d069e0, nfds=1, timeout=, sigmask=0x0) at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/ppoll.c:58
#2 0xf4ac48bb in pa_mainloop_poll () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpulse.so.0
#3 0xf4ac5077 in pa_mainloop_iterate () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpulse.so.0
#4 0xef397908 in conf_pulse_hook_load_if_running () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/alsa-lib/libasound_module_conf_pulse.so
#5 0xef3bc12e in ?? () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2
#6 0xef3bc801 in snd_config_searcha_hooks () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2
#7 0xef3bc8d3 in snd_config_searchva_hooks () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2
#8 0xef3bc9b0 in ?? () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2
#9 0xef3bb932 in snd_config_search_definition () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2
#10 0xef3dc9f4 in ?? () from /home/david/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libasound.so.2
#11 0xf7dc68fa in Audio_Available () at ./src/audio/alsa/SDL_alsa_audio.c:201
#12 0xf7d95f11 in SDL_AudioInit (driver_name=0x0) at ./src/audio/SDL_audio.c:360
#13 0xf7d95323 in SDL_InitSubSystem (flags=16) at ./src/SDL.c:105
#14 0xf7d96715 in SDL_OpenAudio (desired=0xffffcd44, obtained=0x824b748 <s_audioSpec>) at ./src/audio/SDL_audio.c:404
#15 0x081e91dc in SoundLibrary2dSDL::SoundLibrary2dSDL() ()
#16 0x081ede6a in SoundSystem::RestartSoundLibrary() ()
#17 0x080a751f in App::FinishInit() ()
#18 0x0813614a in DefconMain() ()
#19 0x081d3ed9 in main ()

Steam Sysinfo:
Processor Information:
Vendor: GenuineIntel
Speed: 2394 Mhz
2 logical processors
2 physical processors
HyperThreading: Unsupported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Unsupported
SSE41: Unsupported
SSE42: Unsupported

Network Information:
Network Speed:

Operating System Version:
Ubuntu 12.10 (64 bit)
Kernel Name: Linux
Kernel Version: 3.7.0-7-generic
X Server vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Server release: 11301901

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce 9600 GT/PCIe/SSE2

Driver Version:  3.3.0 NVIDIA 313.18
Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 59 Hz
VendorID:  0x10de
DeviceID:  0x622
Number of Monitors:  2
Number of Logical Video Cards:  1
Primary Display Resolution:  1440 x 900
Desktop Resolution: 2880 x 900
Primary Display Size: 16.14" x 10.24"  (19.09" diag)
                                        41.0cm x 26.0cm  (48.5cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary VRAM: 512 MB
Supported MSAA Modes:  2x 4x 8x 16x 

Sound card:
Audio device: SigmaTel STAC9227

Memory:
RAM: 7920 Mb

Miscellaneous:
UI Language: English
LANG: en_AU.UTF-8
Microphone: Not set
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 65705 Mb
Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 12972 Mb

Installed software:

Recent Failure Reports:

[AnAkkk]

I'm having the same issue on both of my computers, Kubuntu 13.04 64bit.
Steam randomly crashes and the games hang. I could backtrace it to libpulse as well with gdb.
It works fine with STEAM_RUNTIME=0.

[bootkiller]

I think this is related to Issue #1297

[slouken]

Can you try downloading these files and then running the .sh script to put them in your steam installation?
http://www.libsdl.org/tmp/steam-runtime-update-3.sh
http://www.libsdl.org/tmp/steam-runtime-update-3.tar.gz

Thanks!

[alfbr]

This one bit me too I believe (also running 12.10 64-bit Kubuntu). I got around the runtime error message by downloading (and installing) the latest steam deb-file. TF2 indeed fails to start. While SS3 runs fine, but no sound. This issue surfaced during the last two days. I have stock install (no ppa's), and the 310 nvidia driver. Thanks for the runtime tip, disabling STEAM_RUNTIME did the trick, sound on SS3 was back :)

slouken, your update did not work. Seems it was 32-bit stuff, while I believe we have 64-bit set-ups.

[slouken]

Can you try downloading these new files and then running the .sh script to put them in your steam installation?
http://www.libsdl.org/tmp/steam-runtime-update-4.sh
http://www.libsdl.org/tmp/steam-runtime-update-4.tar.gz

Thanks!

[slouken]

Even though you have 64-bit stuff, Steam and most of the games are 32-bit.

[olavd]

The problem is that this issue also occur on the 32 bit version of Kubuntu 12.10, so it's not isolated to 64 bit.
Still PulseAudio connection issues after trying the updates above though. Stupid stuff like removing the libasound.so.2* files and the alsa-lib/ directory or other libraries affiliated with sound won't have any effect either, so it's more going on here. Maybe we should try with a new set of SDL libraries as well? OpenAL libraries might also be worth looking at.

Running Half-Life from a client in Konsole, and then brutally killing it (HL1 still running) with Ctrl+C results in this:

SDL_InitSubSystem(SDL_INIT_AUDIO) failed.
S_Startup: SNDDMA_Init failed.

AL lib: pulseaudio.c:612: Context did not connect: Access denied

I noticed you already have stack traces from other reports …

[slouken]

Okay, we have a fix! It'll be in the next update.

[scottlu]

The update is released. Please update and try to reproduce the problem, let us know if it works.

[sulix]

Tested the new version, it all works perfectly! I'm assuming this was the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR problem mentioned in the patch notes.