steam not starting archlinux

[spartaman64]

when i try to start steam i get these errors

[john@localhost ~]$ steam
/home/john/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 161: VERSION_ID: unbound variable
/home/john/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 161: VERSION_ID: unbound variable
Running Steam on arch  64-bit
/home/john/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 161: VERSION_ID: unbound variable
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(0)
libGL error: unable to load driver: nouveau_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau
libGL error: unable to load driver: nouveau_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

[iBurley]

Sorry, not an Arch user, but based on the libGL errors and a bit of digging on the Arch Wiki, and I found this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam#Installation

 

Quote

• If you have a 64-bit system, you must install the 32-bit Multilib version of your graphics driver.

• If you have a 64-bit system, you will need to install lib32-alsa-plugins to enable sound.

• If you have a 64-bit system, you will need to install lib32-curl to enable update at first run.

 

If you haven't already I'd look into that, hopefully somebody else has a bit more personal insight than I do.

[spartaman64]

27 minutes ago, iBurley said:

Sorry, not an Arch user, but based on the libGL errors and a bit of digging on the Arch Wiki, and I found this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam#Installation

 

 

If you haven't already I'd look into that, hopefully somebody else has a bit more personal insight than I do.

thank you will try those fixes next time

[iBurley]

On 5/25/2016 at 7:44 PM, spartaman64 said:

thank you will try those fixes next time

No problem. I assume it's the first one since it seems to be complaining about not loading the nouveau drivers. You may also want to look into proprietary ones if you haven't, they usually get better performance than nouveau.

[spartaman64]

2 minutes ago, iBurley said:

No problem. I assume it's the first one since it seems to be complaining about not loading the nouveau drivers. You may also want to look into proprietary ones if you haven't, they usually get better performance than nouveau.

i had problems with the proprietary drivers when i was using ubuntu like the icons and task bar not appearing and plus sort of defeats the purpose of using linux when you use proprietary software but thanks for the suggestion

[iBurley]

6 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

and plus sort of defeats the purpose of using linux when you use proprietary software

But...You're using Steam...

[spartaman64]

4 minutes ago, iBurley said:

But...You're using Steam...

*when you use proprietary software when there are opensource alternatives

[iBurley]

That's better, haha.

[iBurley]

Asked a guy on Discord who uses Arch and he said it's a common problem, told me to link you here and have you try the first command, if that doesn't work trying the first then the second.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Steam/Troubleshooting#Deleting_the_runtime_libraries

 

edit: he said the first command worked for him but he has to run it every time Steam updates so he added an alias for it:

alias fixsteam='find ~/.steam/root/ \( -name "libgcc_s.so*" -o -name "libstdc++.so*" -o -name "libxcb.so*" -o -name "libgpg-error.so*" \) -print -delete'

Then you just type

fixsteam

into terminal at any time and it'll fix it.