[beta] Error: Couldn't find bootstrap, it's not safe to reset Steam.

[Burrito-Bazooka]

After today's beta update, I get the error message mentioned in the title. It happens when I try to start Steam, and Steam doesn't start successfully.

I use SolydX, which is based on Debian Testing.

Here's the error as seen from command line:

user@burrito-linux-desktop:~/temp$ steam
Running Steam on solydxk 8 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
[2015-10-20 17:59:38] Startup - updater built Oct 20 2015 09:02:49
[2015-10-20 17:59:38] Opted in to client beta 'publicbeta' via beta file
You are in the 'publicbeta' client beta.
Error: Couldn't find bootstrap, it's not safe to reset Steam. Please contact technical support.

user@burrito-linux-desktop:~/temp$ cat ~/.steam/error.log 
rm: cannot remove ‘/home/user/.steam/steam’: Is a directory
rm: cannot remove ‘/home/user/.steam/bin’: Is a directory
/bin/bash: /home/user/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5: no version information available (required by /bin/bash)
/home/user/.steam/steam.sh: line 756: 32202 Illegal instruction     $STEAM_DEBUGGER "$STEAMROOT/$STEAMEXEPATH" "$@"

wat do? Do I reinstall steam? Or is this fixable without reinstalling?

edit: I 'fixed' it by moving ~/.steam/steam.sh to another place. This triggered /usr/games/steam to reinstall the important parts of Steam when I tried to start it. Still a bug, though, because you don't expect an update to disable your installation.

[Tele42]

@Burrito-Bazooka steam reporting that it can't find the bootstrap is a safety measure to prevent steam from messing itself up worse than before when it is installed in a way that was not expected by valve devs. As for the actual issue, that is much better documented on #4077.

[teddybee-r]

I had the same issue.
It happened after a replay download in Dota2.
DotA crashed, steam crashed and this error message appeared.

[gdrewb-valve]

Closing in favor of #4077.