Steam fails to start: glxChooseVisual failed

[Anders Magnus Andersen]

Ubuntu 18.04.1 Minimal (+++)

steam/bionic,now 1:1.0.0.54+repack-5ubuntu1 i386 [installed]

After installing steam it wont run (It runs through the update process successfully).

-see attachment

Cant report with ubuntu-bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/steam/+bug/1784116

[Anders Magnus Andersen (izznogooood)]

It seems I cant add the 32-bit drivers:

anders@idea:~$ sudo apt install nvidia-driver-390:i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 nvidia-driver-390:i386 : Depends: xserver-xorg-video-nvidia-390:i386 (= 390.48-0ubuntu3) but it is not going to be installed
                          Recommends: nvidia-settings:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                          Recommends: nvidia-prime:i386 (>= 0.8) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
anders@idea:~$

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

I would install the driver with
ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Don't install the 32-bit ones on a 64-bit system. That way lies madness.

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

libnvidia-gl-390:i386 was also needed.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Debette Remi (remidebette)]

Hello,

This is still happening on ubuntu 18.04.1 with nvidia-driver-410.

Purging nvidia-drivers, steam, rebooting and reinstalling both does not solve the issue.

Thank you

[Christian Rauch (christianrauch)]

Installing libnvidia-gl-390:i386 fixed the issue for me.

[Noctis Bennington (noctis13)]

Same here, installing libnvidia-gl-390:i386 fix the problem.

[Melvyn Drag (melvyniandrag)]

I've upgraded my drivers so that I can use the new Steam compatibility layer so that I can run Windows games on Linux. I upgraded to 410.48 and began seeing this issue. Based on https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Requirements you need drivers >= 396, so this solution that we should install driver 390 doesn't seem like the proper solution to me. The folks at Valve say to run some of their games you must use driver >= 396.

[Pavel Řezníček (cigydd)]

@melvyniandrag, just issue this command:

apt install libnvidia-gl-410:i386

It solves the error for me.

[Alexander Conley (aconley314)]

libnvidia-gl-410 did not fix the problem for me.

Also, trying to go back to the 390 driver got half way through install,
panicked, and left me with a non-booting system I had to reimage.
So I wouldn't recommend it if you have an RTX card.

[[e-mail] (markackerman8)]

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-396 nvidia-settings nvidia-prime libnvidia-compute-396:i386 libnvidia-decode-396:i386 libnvidia-encode-396:i386 libnvidia-ifr1-396:i386 libnvidia-fbc1-396:i386 libnvidia-gl-396:i386

worked for me with the 410 already installed through
autoinstall

the key thing missing was
libnvidia-gl-410-410:i386
sudo apt-get install libnvidia-gl-410-410:i386, .... fixed it for me

[Bengi Yuks (bengiyuks)]

this bug is fixed by nvidia.

please go to nvidia's web and download the 415.18

and:

1. remove all your nvidia's things like: driver, cuda...etc..
2. add nouveau as blacklist
3. download the 415.18 driver from nvidia
4. mv nvidia-dirver-415* nv.run
5. chmod +x nv.run
6. reboot
7. telinit 3
8. bash nv.run
9. ignore the "pre-install script failed" warning select "continue install"
10. select to install the 32-bit libs
11. select to overwrite
12. select to let the driver automatic set xorg
13. finish install
14. reboot
15. if anything goes fine, will fix the "glX" error.
16. install other nvidia things like cuda.

[Alain Danger (alain-danger)]

Hi. Running Linuxmint (ubuntu 18.04) with NVidia RTX. Problem solved for me after installing libnvidia-gl-415:i386 and ia32-libs.

[Matt (mattcbro)]

Running linux mint 19 64 bit. My problem was solved after first upgrading the Nvidia drivers to libnvidia-gl-415 and then installing the libraries suggested by Alain Danger, namely libnvidia-gl-415:i386 and ia32-libs.

It requires adding the nvidia driver repository as described here and then installing the 415 drivers. The procedure looks something like this:
https://www.pcsuggest.com/install-nvidia-drivers-ubuntu/

However you need to replace the 378 with 415. I had to also install some dependent libraries including some compute libraries that were flagged during installation.

[Brandon Peters (petersb)]

I had the same issue, but it was solved with upgrading to 415. I followed the directions on https://www.pcsuggest.com/install-nvidia-drivers-ubuntu/.

I'm on Ubuntu 18.04

[wlarsong (wlarsong)]

I had this same issue on Ubuntu 16.04 and I got it working finally.
I had to get from Nvidia the CUDA driver .run file ( the .run file contains the 32bit libs steam requires its a 2GB download)
https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-downloads

disable nouveau (/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf add blacklist nouveau)
reboot & run sudo init 3 (At login screen select F3 Key and login the run sudo init 3)
install sudo ./cuda-....run (It takes time be patient)
sudo reboot

After Steam is working

[Tambellini (william-tambellini)]

Warning : got that error and it was just due to buggy early 418 nvidia drivers :

ldconfig -p | grep libGL.s
 libGL.so.1 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib32/nvidia-418/libGL.so.1
 libGL.so.1 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib/nvidia-418/libGL.so.1
 libGL.so (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib32/nvidia-418/libGL.so
 libGL.so (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so
 libGL.so (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib/nvidia-418/libGL.so

see that the 32b libGL is actually 64b.

expected:
 libGL.so.1 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib/nvidia-384/libGL.so.1
 libGL.so.1 (libc6) => /usr/lib32/nvidia-384/libGL.so.1

Fixed after upgrading to 418.56