Steam: webhelper is not responding

[theofficialgman]

What Game
steam

Describe the bug
attempting to launch steam (FEXLoader steam) results in a window that shows "Steamwebhelper is not responding"

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install FEX (Noble PPA armv8.0) with 24.04 rootfs
2. Install steam to the host system
3. start steam with FEXLoader steam
4. See error

Expected behavior
Works

System information:

• OS: Ubuntu 24.04
• CPU/SoC: Tegra X1
• Video driver version: 32.3.1
• RootFS used: Ubuntu 24.04 Official Rootfs
• FEX version: FEX-2407
• Thunks Enabled: GL and Vulkan

[CallumDev]

Most of the time if you wait long enough steamwebhelper will eventually launch in the window, and you can simply close the error dialog with the X in the top right.

[theofficialgman]

It doesn't. I can see via htop output that steamwebhelper tries to start about every 30 seconds on a loop but fails every time.

No issues with steam with box86 and box64 on the same system.

[Sonicadvance1]

Video driver version: 32.3.1
I don't recognize this version number as a mesa version number. So I'm assuming this is an NVIDIA blob version number.
Currently steamwebhelper doesn't work with FEX thunking which is probably what is being seen here.

[theofficialgman]

Video driver version: 32.3.1 I don't recognize this version number as a mesa version number. So I'm assuming this is an NVIDIA blob version number.

yes. nvidia proprietary jetson drivers

Currently steamwebhelper doesn't work with FEX thunking which is probably what is being seen here.

nope. thunking disabled has the same issue.

[Sonicadvance1]

With thunking disabled, the expected behaviour would be steamwebhelper using llvmpipe and then hitting the GPU 10 second watchdog timer and the process exploding, then Steam restarting it.

[theofficialgman]

With thunking disabled, the expected behaviour would be steamwebhelper using llvmpipe and then hitting the GPU 10 second watchdog timer and the process exploding, then Steam restarting it.

This is not happening for me. I get the following with thunks enabled and disabled:

It doesn't. I can see via htop output that steamwebhelper tries to start about every 30 seconds on a loop but fails every time.

No issues with steam with box86 and box64 on the same system.

I can leave it for an infinite amount of time and it never successfully starts...

[CalcProgrammer1]

I'm now running into this issue on both of my postmarketOS test devices. I set up FEX-Emu inside an Ubuntu 24.04 Distrobox container using the official install script and rootfs (extracted). I've defaulted the configs. I can confirm FEXInterpreter works.

I start Steam with FEXBash steam and most of the time it runs into this issue. I get the steamwebhelper crash dialog. A few times, I was able to hit Restart Steam and Steam actually started as expected. However, most of the time it just falls into a crash loop where the steamwebhelper crash dialog keeps popping back up. If I just X out of the steamwebhelper crash dialog, it never eventually comes up.

Test devices are my OnePlus 6T (SDM845 Snapdragon 845, Adreno 630) and Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro (SM8250 Snapdragon 870, Adreno 650) both running postmarketOS Edge with the same Ubuntu 24.04 Distrobox setup. I have been able to log into Steam on both of them at one point, but most of the time I try starting Steam it just has the steamwebhelper crash loop. I've tried deleting all Steam files (.steam, .steampid, .steampath, .local/share/Steam) and letting Steam reinstall itself. I've tried deleting the steam-runtime folder.

I know that it IS working when it does work. I was able to install Half Life 2 and Half Life 2 Deathmatch and play both games on my OnePlus 6T, with GPU acceleration working, though I had to force SDL to use x11. It's just that most of the time I can't even get Steam to open.

[CalcProgrammer1]

One thing that seems to help but may be entirely placebo is deleting all the log files in ~/.steam/steam/logs. If I delete these it seems like there is a higher chance that Steam opens properly on the next launch.