Steam stopped working due to missing 32-bit libraries and how I solved it

[Arakun]

Distro: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS

(I switched from MacOS to Ubuntu a few months ago.)


Summary

Steam stopped working for me about 10 days ago after an automatic system update and subsequent reboot. I tried to reinstall it but got stuck at the point during the initial launch where Steam needs to install additional 32-bit libraries. The installation failed due to some kind of dependency conflict and it took me several days to solve.

Searching through this forum as well as Ask Ubuntu tells me this is a fairly common problem. However, each one seems to be unique in how the dependency conflict arose. Thus I thought it best to still make a forum post of my own so that people can find and comment on it.

In my case the problem was caused by a weird version of libvulkan1 being installed. I sill don't know where it came from. As far as I can tell it only contained the 64-bit version but still conflicted with the 32-bit version, causing this to be uninstalled and pulling a lot of other 32-bit libraries with it. I solved it by downgrading libvulkan1 to the version in the Ubuntu repo. This then allowed me to also install the 32-bit version.


Full account

I don't know exactly how it happened. At one point I ran the Software Updater and was presented with a long list of packages to autoremove. I noticed that a lot of them were programs that I had installed, including Steam. I pressed "no", thinking I'd look into this further when I had the time.

Steam kept working until I rebooted the computer a few days later (causing some final installation/update steps to be performed I assume). I tried reinstalling Steam using apt but it complained about broken dependencies. I checked autoremove and saw that it mostly listed 32-bit graphics libraries. I made the (possibly stupid?) decision to run it and was able to install Steam afterwards.

First, Steam complained about not being able to set up Steam data. I solved this by moving ~/.steam to a temp folder. I then got a terminal window asking me to install additional packages. I was once again met with a message about broken dependencies and this is where I'm stuck.

Steam needs to install these additional packages: 
	libgl1-mesa-dri:i386, libgl1:i386

Följande paket har beroenden som inte kan tillfredsställas:
 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 : Beroende av: libvulkan1:i386 men det kommer inte att installeras
E: Kunde inte korrigera problemen, du har hållit tillbaka trasiga paket.

You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run:
libGL.so.1
libdrm.so.2

I tried to install libvulkan1:i386 using APT. However, it seems to want to remove the existing 64-bit libvulkan1 and all packages dependent on it – some 800 MB all in all.

The error messages I got from APT were fairly cryptic. Aptitude and Synaptic were a lot more helpful.

$ aptitude versions libvulkan1
Paket libvulkan1:                            
p   1.1.70+dfsg1-1                  bionic           500 
p   1.1.70+dfsg1-1ubuntu0.18.04.1   bionic-updates   500 
i   1.1.114.0-1~gpu18.04.1                           100 

Apparently I have three different libvulkan1 packages. I have no idea where the 1.1.114.0 package is coming from.

In the end I decided to try to downgrade to one of the 1.1.70 packages and that seemed to do the trick. I was able to install libvulkan1:i386 alongside it. Steam was then able to install its 32-bit packages and launch without problem.

Still, it'd be nice to figure out where the libvulkan1 packages came from and why it conflicted with the 32-bit package.

[Tristan]

/// In the end I decided to try to downgrade to one of the 1.1.70 packages and that seemed to do the trick. I was able to install libvulkan1:i386 alongside it. Steam was then able to install its 32-bit packages and launch without problem.

Still, it'd be nice to figure out where the libvulkan1 packages came from and why it conflicted with the 32-bit package.

/////


Good To Hear that

I think i ran into something similar in the Past and also had to Downgrade from Beta

[Marlock]

Which PPAs and other 3rd-party repos* do you have enabled? That would be the number one suspect in such a situation...

if it was a packaging error from Canonical, the offending version would be listed at bionic or bionic-updates and not as a third, apparently nameless channel... (and probably a lot more people would be raging about it in the forums already)

by other 3rd-party repos I mean debian-style sources, which Ubuntu as a Debian derivate distro using APT can also use and should transparently show up in the Update Manager too:
https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList

Editing software sources

Using a graphical program

Some programs allow configuring Apt sources through a graphical interface. For example:

Applications menu > Settings > Software and updates (software-properties-gtk package)

Using a text editor

The main Apt sources configuration file is at /etc/apt/sources.list. You can edit this files (as root) using your favorite text editor.

To add custom sources, creating separate files under /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ is preferred.