Advanced System Recovery
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Methods and topics for recovering your system if you are unable to reach Steam BPM or boot your system.
- Nvidia
- AMD
- Intel/Mesa
See the "Recovery Mode" wiki entry.
At times, a bad update, or incorrectly applied Steam update can really bring things to a halt. Most recently (as of time of writing), the update did not go smoothly, and users were left without a key folder, /home/steam/.local/share/Steam/tenfoot. This folder is required to launch Big Picture Mode. So what do you do? You have 2 main options:
Run steam via a "fake X server" utility
The below command should allow Steam to update from Recovery Mode or via SSH. You will need the program xvfb, which is in the SteamOS repository. An example log of the below actions can be found here. It is best to do this over SSH, but can be done in Recovery Mode, provided you have a working network connection.
If you are doing this via SSH, after some time of pulling down files, you should get a "Continuing" message. SteamOS BPM should just automatically start. If it does not, wait 5 or so minutes and perform sudo reboot. If BPM starts by itself, let your system sit for 5-10 minutes. Chances are, /usr/bin/steamos-autorepair.sh will reboot when it has finished it's part.
# Ensure we have a network connection first
# This is REQUIRED
ping www.google.com
# Run fix
apt-get install -y xvfb
su - steam -c '/usr/bin/xvfb-run -a -e /tmp/steam_update_log.txt /usr/bin/steam'
Do NOT attempt unless you are brave :)
If this does not work, you can reset the Steam folder and bootstrap again
rm -rf /home/steam/.local/share/Steam*
su - steam -c '/usr/bin/xvfb-run -a -e /tmp/steam_update_log.txt /usr/bin/steam --reset'
su - steam -c '/usr/bin/xvfb-run -a -e /tmp/steam_update_log.txt /usr/bin/steam'
If you are told you are missing 32-bit libraries, punch the filename into packages.debian.org under the search type "Package Contents." You will want to install the 32 bit variant, such as package:i386.
Temporarily disabling Auto-login and updating Steam manually
Ensure you have the desktop and steam logins set. Follow the Change The Default Login To The Desktop Session wiki page to boot into desktop mode directly.
Once you login to the desktop (preferably as user "steam"). Start 'steam' from a terminal window. If you login as user "desktop", you should be able to run sudo -u steam -c '/usr/bin/steam' from a terminal window.
If any of the below steps or logs proves too much, or the system is still unusable, you can also consider re-installing SteamOS. This should be considered a last step, unless you do not mind loosing any data. Not all games with Steam Cloud service store game saves /configurations (though, most do). You can retain the /home partition that stores user information by choosing the "Expert Install" of the installation process.
