How to do a clean reinstallation of Steam?

H2SO4JB

Hi,

I have a bit of a problem getting Steam (the client) to start in Batocera 32. It just shuts down instantly without displaying any error message. I installed it about two months ago and tested a game, and everything worked perfectly. I have not used Steam since then and today when I would install another Steam game, not even the Steam client starts in Batocera. What I have done since then is that I have connected a large external USB hard drive and moved my SHARE folder to it (with the built-in move function). All other emulators work perfectly but I guess Steam installs in different places in the system and some path is now incorrect. I don’t know.

I have tried uninstalling Steam with the following command: flatpak uninstall com.valvesoftware.Steam
And then reinstalled it with the following command: flatpak install com.valvesoftware.Steam

This is probably not the way to go because it does not help. Is it possible in any way to completely clear all old tracks of Steam and reinstall it? I’m not that good at Linux but I suspect I need to clear other traces of the Steam client to do a new clean install (similar to registry cleaning in Windows)?

I attach two log files that show what is happening in the background. I don’t understand anything, but maybe someone here does? What should I do to resolve this? Thanks in advance.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hp2xsfy7y5pdu6l/es_launch_stderr_log.txt
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u5p3tv7xrzoj1rf/es_launch_stdout_log.txt

Atari

H2SO4JB It is likely that when you moved the folders onto a USB hard drive it did not carry over the permission bits attached to them; flatpak (and hence, Steam) is very dependent on these being set correctly. Emulators for old retro systems, not so much.
What file system is the USB hard drive?

H2SO4JB

Atari

Hi Atari,

Thank you for trying to help me. I started by formatting the USB hard drive with the built-in formatting tool in Batocera, so it is ext4. I can not read it if I connect it to Windows so I transfer all roms via LAN.

Yes, I also saw the error message regarding Permission Denied, but I have no idea how to resolve it. That’s where my Linux knowledge ends, but I’m good at following instructions. :-)

I suspect there are two solutions?

1. Try to solve the permissions so they are correct.

2. Completely uninstall Steam and all traces of it and install a new fresh copy of it. In that case, I need to know exactly what to uninstall and delete. If this is the easiest way, I would gladly do it because I have not had time to install a lot of games yet, so it does not matter if I have to start over.

Atari

As you said,

I have tried uninstalling Steam with the following command: flatpak uninstall com.valvesoftware.Steam
And then reinstalled it with the following command: flatpak install com.valvesoftware.Steam

so you have already attempted to reinstall Steam and it has not fixed the problem. It could be that the entirety of Flatpak has incorrect permissions. Try using the old workaround as mentioned on the wiki page to solve permission issues: https://wiki.batocera.org/systems:flatpak#my_flatpaks_won_t_launch

And of course, doing a re-flash and using the USB drive before installing any Flatpaks should also work.

There is a possibility that Flatpak may not work on anything other than the internal storage. All I know currently is that Flatpaks do not work across a NAS network.

H2SO4JB

Hi again,
Thanks for your answers. I have been trying different things all day and managed to solve the problem. The solution was to replace my boot drive with a new one with a new and fresh installation of Batocera (internal NVMe drive in my case).

I started by installing the Steam client and logged in to my account. Then I plugged in my previous 8TB USB hard drive to use as SHARE again, and after a reboot everything worked (including Steam) and looked like before.

I don’t know what it may have been due to but probably something on the boot drive was fixed with this process. 😀

Thanks so much for your help!