Client becomes unresponsive to the user (all windows) but continues to run/download

[stevethepocket]

This is similar to an issue the Windows client has had for ages, but even more common, from the looks of it. While downloading a game (TF2, at the moment), the client appeared to freeze up, ignoring attempts to click on any of its windows (other than to focus them) and not updating the download progress in the library list. The MainThrd process continues to use ~25% CPU and download game files, so it's still working in the background; it's just the GUI itself that's been halted.

So far this has happened three times in a row with no apparent pattern to when it stops responding, although it hasn't frozen while I'm in the middle of trying to do something with it yet. The third time was after accepting the automatic update that released this evening.

Kubuntu 12.04 + whatever updates it automatically installed during setup.

[bespokebob]

I saw a similar issue while TF2 was downloading. I set all of my Linux games to download overnight. In the morning, the UI was frozen, apparently stuck downloading TF2, with the MainThrd process eating almost an entire CPU core. After killing and re-starting Steam, all my games appeared to be downloaded successfully. I have not seen this happen since, though.

[davidw-valve]

Is this still happening for you? If it is, please run kill -11 on your steam process and it should crash with a crash ID -- please send us the crash ID and we'll try to look into it further.

[stevethepocket]

I haven't been using Linux lately since I needed the new AMD driver to play anything worthwhile, but no, from the looks of it, it doesn't do this anymore. It did randomly crash while downloading a few times, but then that stopped too. A recent update probably dealt with it, or something.

[davidw-valve]

Closing this since it no longer seems to happen.