Steam vr troubleshooting

See also steam vr performance.

Errors Logs

Types of Errors

Most issues I've encountered with SteamVR are caused by:

• missing libraries
• assumptions about case-insentive filesystems

Finding Errors

You must check multiple places to catch errors:

• run steam in a console, filter output with grep to catch most errors
• check the various steam logs, they contain info that won't show up in your console

# starting in console and watching logs is most dependable source of errors
# logs exist in ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/Steam/logs but NOT EVERY ERROR is logged
steam | grep -i -e 'vrwebhelper' -e 'failed' -e 'error' -e 'symbol'

# HTTP request errors, other
rg -i -e 'failed' -e 'error' -e 'symbol' ~/.local/share/Steam/logs

You can also show logs from the SteamVR UI

SteamVR > Create System Report:
  - Logs tab

Unable to contact Mongoose

• doesn't seem to be firewall
• doesn't seem to be dnsmasq
• validated steamvr

Errors/Fixes

SteamVR > Settings won't start

Check the logs, I needed to downgrade freetype2 and install libcef.

SteamVR Dashboard won't display

• (2021/10/17) this was resolved with the CEF Local Resource Load Error fix listed below.

Log Errors

(2021/10/17) symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6: undefined symbol: hb_ot_tags_from_script_and_language

Downgrade to freetype-2.2.10.4-1

sudo curl -O# \
  https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/path/freetype2-2.10.4-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst.sig \
  -o /var/cache/pacman/pkg/freetype2-2.10.4-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst.sig 

sudo pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/path/freetype2-2.10.4-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

# /etc/pacman.conf

[options]
# - freetype2: steamvr issue 2021/10/17
IgnorePkg = freetype2

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/7935

(2021/10/17) error while loading shared libraries: libcef.so

aura -A cef-standard
# OR
aura -A cef-minimal

NOTE:

still getting errors, perhaps adjust LD_LIBRARY_PATH

(2021/10/17) ERROR: ld.so: object 'gameoverlayrenderer.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded (wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32):

Ignorable.

(2021/10/17 | vrwebhelper_pairing.txt) CEF Local Resource Load Error

The filenames fonts installed with steam are mixed-case, but being retreived lowercased.
Linux filesystems are case sensitive, create symlinks for the lowercased variation.

# ~/.local/share/Steam/logs/vrwebhelper_pairing.txt
CEF Local Resource Load Error: http://localhost:27062/fonts/get_font?font=motiva-sans-regular.ttf -> 404 (Not Found)

cd ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/resources/webinterface/fonts \
  && ln -s Motiva-Sans-Bold.ttf    motiva-sans-bold.ttf \
  && ln -s Motiva-Sans-Regular.ttf motiva-sans-regular.ttf

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamVR-for-Linux/issues/255#issuecomment-877844004