Dead .steampath symlink is created every time steam is run

[karlos1841]

Steam creates symlink .steampath pointing to nonexistent .steam/sdk32/steam in $HOME every time it is run whereas it should be pointing to .steam/bin32/steam.

[chewi]

True, I have this too but I'd never noticed it before. I doubt this is our fault though? I'll check my wife's OpenSUSE system tomorrow.

[chewi]

Strange, I've checked two OpenSUSE systems and they both link to the correct location.

[karlos1841]

All right, I'll try to debug and fix the issue today if you let me.

…

On Dec 29, 2017 16:21, "James Le Cuirot" ***@***.***> wrote: Strange, I've checked two OpenSUSE systems and they both link to the correct location. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#206 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOSel1bDmynDuG0QJIA8t4nc9UumbDVgks5tFQOIgaJpZM4ROvf8> .

[karlos1841]

steam.sh script located in ${HOME}/.local/share/Steam seems to be responsible for creating a bad link. The upstream bootstrap.tar.xz contains the correct one. However when I extract the archive and run steam, then it replaces steam.sh with the bad one and I don't really know the origin of this bad script.

…

On Dec 30, 2017 15:00, "Karlos" ***@***.***> wrote: All right, I'll try to debug and fix the issue today if you let me. On Dec 29, 2017 16:21, "James Le Cuirot" ***@***.***> wrote: > Strange, I've checked two OpenSUSE systems and they both link to the > correct location. > > — > You are receiving this because you authored the thread. > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > <#206 (comment)>, > or mute the thread > <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOSel1bDmynDuG0QJIA8t4nc9UumbDVgks5tFQOIgaJpZM4ROvf8> > . >

[Tele42]

Do not remove or alter this symlink, it exists and is intentionally broken to provide legacy steamworks compatibility as being tracked at ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#5245.

(~/.steam/sdk32/anything is what is needed)

[chewi]

Fair enough. Could you please explain what the issue actually is? The report doesn't say why the old SDK is bad.

[Tele42]

My understanding is that steamworks 1.21 and older are blindly following the path in .steampath to load up steamclient.so. There is two variants of this, the sdk variant for games and a slightly heavier variant for steam itself. The issue is that the wrong behavior has been baked into games built against the older sdk.

[chewi]

I see... I think. Thanks for that. I'll close this then.

[rileyrg]

2021 - yup, it's still there. Would be nice if steam cleaned up after itself.

[pemasat]

2021 - and now this happened for me the same bug : (

[chewi]

I don't remember this issue too well and I don't think I understood very well at the time either, but it's not clear to me what the actual issue is. Is anything actually not working or are you just complaining about a harmless broken symlink?

[mazunki]

From this issue it seems like Steam knows which games depend on this path, so I don't see any reason for the symlink to be there when these games are not running. Create the path when a game needs it, delete it when closing the game.

I really do not like having $HOME/.steam{path,pid,} in my home directory. I could deal with one file, but 3? Come on.

[JimPix1]

+1 in 2022

[chewi]

@JimPix1 Again, I need to ask are you just seeing some harmless broken symlinks or something more? If it's just the former then sorry, I can't help you.

[JimPix1]

My apologies, I wasn't aware this was the steam-overlay repo

[qodroi]

Same here

[klaribot]

So does .steampath -> ${HOME}/steam/sdk32/steam intentionally point to non-existent directory steam within sdk32? The only things that exist in my sdk32 are:

crashhandler.so
steamclient.so
steamerrorreporter

--which are all executables; there are no directories here.
To understand clearly, this is intentionally broken?

[chewi]

You're asking the wrong people. Perhaps Valve are well aware, but I have no idea. It still looks like this for me, and it's still not caused any issues.