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Michael DeGuzis edited this page Jun 15, 2017 · 15 revisions

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Application segfaults / crashes

If an application is crashing, or segfaulting, please submit an issues ticket. If you are interested in debugging this, see the Arch Linux Debugging Guide for some guidelines and steps.

As of 20160528, several packaged applications seem to segfault, including:

  • VLC (Debian Jessie)
  • Kodi 17 Alpha
  • RetroArch >= 1.3.4

It was found out this was due to libegl-nvidia0 missing that provides libEGL_nvidia.so*. I added this as a requirement to Retroarch and Kodi 17 in my test repository and it solved both segfault issues. This also fixed the segfault on VLC as well. So, the question is then, what is causing this? Could be the latest driver in use with SteamOS, or how Valve implemented it’s use, did they use a standard installation, or leave out a package? This issue will be revisited at some point soon to ensure the course of action taken here was/is appropriate.

To fix:

sudo apt-get install libegl-nvidia0

Debugging SteamOS-Tools package issues

If you have trouble installing, upgrading, or using software from packages.libregeek.org, this may be due to several factors:

  • Improper /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ files
  • Improper /etc/apt/preferences.d/ files
  • Old configuration setup
  • Conflicting repository setups from other sources
  • System upgrade issues preventing installation/upgrade

For most cases, passing the "--repair" argument is sufficient:

cd SteamOS-Tools/
git pull && ./configure-repos.sh --repair

Aside from this, check the output of these commands

command what does it do?
apt-cache policy PKGNAME Check the installed version, upgrade version
apt-get update Update source lists
apt-get update --fix-missing Update source lists and try repairing
apt-get install PKGNAME Try to install/upgrade the pkg (update first)

If you submit an issue regarding any of the above, please attach a gist of your command output.

Still having trouble?

If an upgrade/versioning issue snuck into the repository, try remove/purge options with apt-get to install the correct version:

sudo apt-get remove ffmpeg
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

For upgrade issues, see the next section "Debugging SteamOS upgrade issues."

Debugging SteamOS upgrade issues

If you still get a message in your inbox saying "Restart to update SteamOS" but no matter how many restarts you perform, and it doesn't seem update beyond your current version, you may have an underlying technical issue.

Review the output from these commands

  • apt -s install
  • apt -s dist-upgrade

These commands will simulate some package upgrades.

Digging further down the rabbit hole**

sudo unattended-upgrade -d will debug the unattended upgrades in a terminal window. sudo unattended-upgrade --dry-run will simulate the upgrade process for safety. If you choose to do a dry run first, check the logs.

Take note of these logs below:

desktop@steamos:~$ sudo ls /var/log/unattended-upgrades/
unattended-upgrades-dpkg.log  unattended-upgrades-shutdown.log
unattended-upgrades.log       unattended-upgrades-shutdown-output.log

The upgrades.log file will show the debug-like info for the unattended upgrade. The dpkg log will show apt-get output related information. The shutdown log are more akin to dmesg output. I never see much in the shutdown-output specific log.

##Examples of logs with issues

  • here is an example where a Debian package was caught between a rock and a hard place, in which it was being prevented from being installed. Presumably, another package from SteamOS-Tools/Debian requested it, and it wasn't "trusted."
  • No conffiles in deb

Learn more

See the wiki page on unattended-upgrades

Script [NAME] doesn't work! Fix it!

While I have had some great help from people in recent times, there are bound to be mistakes and even unfinished scripts in this repository. If you find one, please report it. If you know how to fix it, pull requests are very welcome. When I have an idea of something I want to do here, it may not be complete yet, but I try to maintain some semblance of balance, stability, and structure. For this reason, the testing-a and testing-b repository branches exist to server as testing grounds for SteamOS Alchemist, and SteamOS Brewmaster, respectively.

I do ask that people be patient with me. I have many other distractions to keep me busy, but you're still free to shout at me :)

I can't install [PACKAGE_NAME] after adding the extra repositories!

The same issue that often affects i386 packages needed for applications like PlayOnLinux and PCSX2 require that you remove the changelog files manually for now.

The changelog usually lives at /usr/share/doc/PACKAGE/changelog.Debian.gz

Since the time of writing, the libselinux1:i386 conflict has been resolved. and libattr:i386 have been resolved with Brewmaster beta 2.55 onward . Please note the Debian approach only works if both the amd64 and i386 packages are the exact same version.

If you still experience this, legacy instructions for correcting this are below (example libattr1).

sudo rm -f /usr/share/doc/libattr1/changelog.Debian.gz
sudo rm -f /usr/share/doc/libselinux1/changelog.Debian.gz
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get install PKGNAME

Kodi crashes frequently for me!

Please see issue #91 for this matter. This commonly is reported by users with AMD hardware utilizing FGLRX proprietary drivers. While Kodi can* work to a degree, FGLRX (the default driver used under SteamOS) is not supported. Also note that software decoding (i.e. turning off vaapi and vdpau) will work fine on fglrx. Usually gaming rigs have more then enough power for that.

To enable/disable software decoding, please see the Kodi wiki

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