steam client window all black

[elguavas]

in hirsute (21.04) steam (steam/hirsute 1:1.0.0.68-1ubuntu1) displays it's client window as completely black, with no visible contents.

if started from a console the line:

<user-home-directory>.steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper.sh: line 23: 124402 Segmentation fault (core dumped) ./steamwebhelper "$@"

keeps looping past.

in the syslog a stack of messages like this:

[10787.795446] steamwebhelper[36492]: segfault at c068 ip 00007f42d82c1d12 sp 00007ffc8d815180 error 4 in libcef.so[7f42d8249000+69a4000]
[10787.795461] Code: 8b 25 72 64 ea 06 49 c1 ec 0d 4c 8d 05 d8 56 85 ff 0f 1f 80 00 00 00 00 4d 89 f7 4d 8b 36 4d 31 e6 49 83 fe ff 74 2e 49 f7 d6 <49> 8b 46 08 4c 31 e0 48 f7 d0 49 39 c7 0f 85 9d 02 00 00 8d 41 01

appear, indicating a crash in libcef.so which is part of the steam installation. i think this lib may be a part of the chromium based webview which steam appears to use.

locate finds libcef.so at <user-home-directory>/.steam/ubuntu12_64/libcef.so

the problem was not present with steam on 20.10 but is present with steam on 21.04 .

on triage please let me know if any other info would be of use, cheers.

[elguavas (elguavas.)]

some extra info: this is on kubuntu 21.04 in an x session. if i change the session to a wayland one, the issue goes away.

so the above mentioned crash in steam's libcef.so is triggered under x but not under wayland, which might suggest a bad interaction with the x graphics stack. in my case the x driver in use is the one for amd gpu's.

unfortunately i can't cure this by switching to a wayland session by default because of Bug #1922438 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox/+bug/1922438) which makes firefox unusable in a kubuntu wayland session.