Installing Steam for Linux Beta on Fedora 17

Posted on December 7, 2012 by russellbryant

UPDATE: Since the original post, the download of Team Fortress 2 completed and I hit a problem. The post has been amended with the solution.

It sounds like a lot more people got access to the Steam for Linux beta yesterday, including me. An announcement on steamcommunity.com says:

We’ve just expanded the limited public beta by a large amount – which means another round of email notifications – so check your inbox!

The official download is a deb package for Ubuntu. My laptop runs Fedora 17. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was an unofficial Fedora repository already ready to use. Here is how I installed the beta on my laptop running Fedora 17:

$ wget http://spot.fedorapeople.org/steam/steam.repo ... $ sudo mv steam.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/ $ sudo yum install steam ... $ rpm -q steam steam-1.0.0.14-3.fc17.i686

Once installation was completed, I ran the steam client from the same terminal:

$ steam

The first time I ran the steam client it automatically created /home/rbryant/Steam and downloaded about 100 kB of updates. Once the updates completed, the login screen came up. I closed the steam client and ran it again. I got a warning dialog that said:

Unable to copy /home/rbryant/Steam/bin_steam.sh to /usr/bin/steam, please contact your system administrator.

This was a bit odd since the app that I had been running was already /usr/bin/steam. I suspect this is just automatically installing a new version based on what was downloaded with the updates. Based on the output in my terminal, I can see that before this warning came up, steam tried to find gksudo, kdesudo, or xterm and then gave up. I went ahead and installed xterm.

$ sudo yum install xterm

When running steam yet again, it popped up an xterm window to ask me to type in my password. This only happened once. Subsequent runs of the steam client in my terminal went straight to the login window.

From there I finally decided to log in using my existing steam account. I confirmed access to my account on a new computer and was in. I kicked off a download of Team Fortress 2 Beta for Linux.

Once the game download was complete, I clicked Play. The first time I tried, it failed with the following error:

Required OpenGL extension “GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc” is not supported. Please install S3TC texture support.

To fix this, I had to add the rpmfusion repositories to my machine and install the libtxc_dxtn package.

$ sudo yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

$ sudo yum install libtxc_dxtn

If you’re running 64-bit Linux, you will actually need the 32-bit version of this library to fix the game. Install it by running:

$ sudo yum install libtxc_dxtn.i686

Once all of that was done, the game launched successfully and I was able to start a training session.

Enjoy!

27 thoughts on “Installing Steam for Linux Beta on Fedora 17”

Dragnucs on December 7, 2012 at 1:38 pm said:

Hi man.
Is there any free games to try on that steam? I’m not prepared to pay for something bugy. I wanna wait until Left 4 Dead is officaly released.

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- russellbryant on December 7, 2012 at 5:59 pm said:
  
  You can play Team Fortress 2 for free (for now, anyway).
  
  Reply ↓
  - Dragnucs on December 7, 2012 at 6:17 pm said:
    
    Thanks dude.
  - russellbryant on December 7, 2012 at 7:40 pm said:
    
    You’re welcome!
  - Luke on December 29, 2012 at 9:49 pm said:
    
    tf2 is a free to play game.
Renifer on December 8, 2012 at 12:03 am said:

Installed the software and got it running. Unfortunately it does not allow you to play any games unless you are part of the Beta release, and since I’m not, it does not allow me to download or play any games and shuts down after showing a warning that says:
“Unauthorized This version of Steam is currently in closed beta. Login with an enrolled account to continue.”
It does not provide information on how to enroll.

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- russellbryant on December 8, 2012 at 4:03 am said:
  
  Sorry for the confusion! You can request beta access here ( http://www.valvesoftware.com/linuxsurvey.php). Find more info on http://steamcommunity.com/linux
  
  Reply ↓
Rick McFarley on December 8, 2012 at 8:39 am said:

Thanks a bunch dude, it worked like a charm.

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- russellbryant on December 8, 2012 at 9:21 am said:
  
  You’re welcome!
  
  Reply ↓
a8n_ on December 9, 2012 at 3:32 pm said:

For reference, you mentioned that after running the client for the first time, it downloaded about 100 KB of updates. This is more like 100 MB (ie: Mega, not Kilo).

Thanks for the guide though. Works great!

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Jaison on December 9, 2012 at 4:30 pm said:

I for the life of me cannot get TF2 to run.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rd54crqbkr25cq4/steam_TF2_log.txt

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- russellbryant on December 9, 2012 at 8:40 pm said:
  
  Its crashing (seg fault). Ideally nothing should make the game crash like that so you should report it.
  
  Reply ↓
rmattes on December 19, 2012 at 10:18 pm said:

To solve the TF2 crashes, you might have to allow execheap if you have selinux enabled. You can use:

su -c “setsebool -P allow_execheap 1”

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Phil on December 21, 2012 at 8:36 pm said:

The repo you linked above appears to be gone.

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mkruger on December 22, 2012 at 6:35 pm said:

Looks like Fedora pulled the plug on this…..404 not found.

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syskill on December 23, 2012 at 4:33 pm said:

The repo’s gone :_(

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Sigg3 on January 8, 2013 at 11:29 am said:

OpenSuse has a repo here: http://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home:Mailaender:branches:games&package=steam

Alternatively; https://build.opensuse.org/package/show?package=steam&project=home%3AMailaender%3Abranches%3Agames

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- Sigg3 on January 8, 2013 at 11:30 am said:
  
  Just click Download package on that page.
  
  Reply ↓
russellbryant on January 8, 2013 at 1:55 pm said:

Sounds like the Fedora repo should be back now: https://twitter.com/spotrh/status/288716059060629504

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Mario on January 10, 2013 at 5:23 pm said:

Worked like a charm! Great work!

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G_A on January 11, 2013 at 5:09 pm said:

The repo makes a mess on AMD64, seeing as it doesn’t include the required 32bit mesa-stuff. This causes several (most?) non-steam games to fail, as the required libs and whatnot is simply not there for them. (They’re 32-bit).

Normally, you’d just do a “sudo yum install mesa*.i686” or similar to install “the lot”, but of course you can’t do that now:

Error: Package: mesa-libEGL-devel-9.0-5.fc17.i686 (steam)
Requires: khrplatform-devel >= 9.0-5.fc17
Available: khrplatform-devel-8.0.2-8.fc17.noarch (fedora)
khrplatform-devel = 8.0.2-8.fc17
Available: khrplatform-devel-8.0.4-1.fc17.noarch (updates)
khrplatform-devel = 8.0.4-1.fc17
Error: Package: mesa-libGLES-devel-9.0-5.fc17.i686 (steam)
Requires: khrplatform-devel >= 9.0-5.fc17
Available: khrplatform-devel-8.0.2-8.fc17.noarch (fedora)
khrplatform-devel = 8.0.2-8.fc17
Available: khrplatform-devel-8.0.4-1.fc17.noarch (updates)
khrplatform-devel = 8.0.4-1.fc17

Because steam seamingly require a newer version of something that conflicts with mesa-packages from official repos.

Of course, if I’m VERY lucky khrplatform-devel is simply forgotten from the repo. Could it be that simple? Or am i out of luck on 64-bit?

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Dusan on January 13, 2013 at 11:33 am said:

Steam dont work with nvidia optimus – via command “optirun steam”
I get this:
/home/dusan/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: riadok 337: 13883 Chyba segmentácie (bol uložený výpis pamäte) $STEAM_DEBUGGER “$STEAMROOT/$PLATFORM/$STEAMEXE” “$@”

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- xneto on February 9, 2013 at 3:23 pm said:
  
  I guess it’s nothing to do with nvidia. Since I updated to version 18 it’s broken.
  
  Running Steam on fedora 18 64-bit
  STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
  Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360439662_client)
  Looks like steam didn’t shutdown cleanly, scheduling immediate update check
  Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360439662_client)
  Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360439662_client)
  threadtools.cpp (1443) : Assertion Failed: Permissão negada
  Assert( Assertion Failed: Permissão negada ):/home/buildbot/buildslave_steam/steam_rel_client_ubuntu12_linux/build/src/tier0/threadtools.cpp:1443
  
  Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360439662_client)
  Uploading dump (in-process) [proxy ”]
  /tmp/dumps/assert_20130209182113_1.dmp
  success = yes
  response: CrashID=bp-6e2a0a50-814c-4098-9309-8badc2130209
  threadtools.cpp (1093) : Assertion Failed: semaphore creation failed Operação agora em progresso
  Assert( Assertion Failed: semaphore creation failed Operação agora em progresso ):/home/buildbot/buildslave_steam/steam_rel_client_ubuntu12_linux/build/src/tier0/threadtools.cpp:1093
  
  Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1360439662_client)
  Uploading dump (in-process) [proxy ”]
  /tmp/dumps/assert_20130209182130_2.dmp
  success = yes
  response: CrashID=bp-4732868f-b42b-4250-81eb-da62d2130209
  unlinked 0 orphaned pipes
  removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 6612 with name 0emSteamEngineInstance
  removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 6612 with name 0eSteamEngineLock
  threadtools.cpp (1443) : Assertion Failed: Permissão negada
  Shutting down. . .
  unlinked 2 orphaned pipes
  FATAL: exception not rethrown
  CAsyncIOManager: 0 threads terminating. 0 reads, 0 writes, 0 deferrals.
  CAsyncIOManager: 49 single object sleeps, 0 multi object sleeps
  CAsyncIOManager: 0 single object alertable sleeps, 1 multi object alertable sleeps
  Uploading dump (in-process) [proxy ”]
  /tmp/dumps/crash_20130209182153_3.dmp
  Thread “CHTTPClientThreadPool:0” (ID -174064832) failed to shut downsuccess = yes
  response: CrashID=bp-c21e9e01-fc4f-4f9c-8709-6db992130209
  /home/adhemar/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 561: 15467 Abortado (imagem do núcleo gravada)$STEAM_DEBUGGER “$STEAMROOT/$PLATFORM/$STEAMEXE” “$@”
  
  Reply ↓
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jomadee on February 14, 2013 at 8:32 pm said:

on my computer, when I enter the game the screen goes black just to put the sound of the game

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Archie Carlson on November 1, 2013 at 6:43 am said:

You can try

Download STEAM repository
Code:

$ su –
# wget http://spot.fedorapeople.org/steam/steam.repo

Move STEAM repo file into your system repo directory
Code:

# mv steam.repo /etc/yum.repos.d
# yum update
# yum install steam

or

Code:

# yum -y –enablerepo=rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-testing install steam
# reboot

From this article http://namhuy.net/1613/install-steam-fedora-linux.html

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