Steam randomly deleted one of my libraries again

[Robosole]

I'm just figuring out what happened, but this is the second time I have opened Steam and discovered that all of the Steam-related files in a specific library folder have been deleted. My rig has three drives, two SSDs and one HDD. There is one steam library folder on each. I use the library on my NVMe SSD (/steam/) for a few of my most-played games to accelerate load times (Warframe, Skyrim...), which is also marked as my default library. Now, a bunch of those games are grayed out with the need to be reinstalled. A quick "ls /steam" reveals nothing left...

I'm wondering if this is related to a classic bug: https://www.theregister.com/2015/01/17/scary_code_of_the_week_steam_cleans_linux_pcs/
That bug involved the Steam launcher script running "rm -rf" on systems with additional library paths. Fortunately, this is not deleting anything outside of the given library, but why is this happening at all? Was the code path to trigger the old bug ever fixed? I seem to recall Steam nukes and redownloads the steam runtime files on a crash timer, but Steam exited gracefully last time I used it.

I'm running Gentoo Linux on a 2990wx, Taichi x399m, 64GB RAM, and a Radeon VII, My system software is a bit outdated now from an update I'm putting off; kernel 5.6.14, xorg 7.4-r3, open source AMDGPU 19.1.0 drivers. Opted in to Steam client beta.

Of course this would happen while I'm having unrelated problems with the home internet which will impair redownloading the lost games.

(edit) fixed default library description

[Marlock]

question... is it really a coincidence that this happened during the unrelated internet problems? or is a bad connection somehow able to trigger the rm -rf bug (eg: due to failed hashes for integrity checks)?

[Robosole]

Originally posted by Marlock:

question... is it really a coincidence that this happened during the unrelated internet problems? or is a bad connection somehow able to trigger the rm -rf bug (eg: due to failed hashes for integrity checks)?

To be honest, I was wondering that myself. I did encounter other reports for the old bug that it happened after a previous login failure.

In my case, I have been stuck using the hotspot feature on my phone while the home internet is out. Perhaps if I turned off the hotspot early on the previous run this would be my first time logging in after a less-than-graceful logout from steam?

[Robosole]

... And it did it again. Maybe it has to do with sleep mode? I'm opening a support ticket.

[GuRu Asaki]

I am not sure about this...

My Linux hasn't done this for me at all, but i'm not using a NVME SSD,
I do have one & a Radeon VII GPU, but my System Config is no where
near yours in terms of anything else like CPU, & such.

The Radeon VII GPU also hasn't been installed...

I also don't have Linux on it to test & find out.

------------------------------------------------

This PC i'm using here has both Windows 10 & Linux with 2 SSD & an External Portable 3.0 USB Drive, & i've had Zero Problems with Games being Lost.
It also has no NVME & only a 4GB VRAM AMD GPU inside.

I have experienced a Situation over the Years on Windows, though.
---->> Where my Files Randomly just Wipe off my Computer...

Old, New, Used, Or Non-Used Files just randomly Disappear out of nowhere.

This also goes for Entire Full Installed Games.

I never had any Errors, or Bugs causing this. They just simply up & Disappear.

Mind You: These File Wipes all started I wanna say probably in the Win98
Computer ERA from when I first started noticing the problems. or the WinXP ERA.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Could this also be happening with Linux, too?

While it does not appear to happen with CD's it does seem CD's Degrade over time,
so i'm not exactly sure how one would keep their Files safe without Constantly
Duplicating them over multiple places, & just so happened to get Lucky over it...

Maybe there is an Internal Clock in the System that basically determines
how long a File can last for on a Computer System? No?

I could of sworn I read something about this somewhere written on my Linux,
but as i'm New to Linux, I am not sure if this is the cause here.

[Marlock]

@guru asaky
if your files are in a single disk it's a matter of when, not if you'll loose them... you should always have a duplicate!

for finetuned bash script automated backups, rsync is king

for GUI-based solutions I've never seen better than FreeFileSync in the past 10 years (for me the flatpak version crashes when trying to apply the sync changes! but the non-flatpak install runs just fine)


@OP... maybe you should stop postponing that kernel upgrade... there is a tiny chance that the issue you have may be just a consequence of a bug in the kernel causing data-loss... it just hit me that somewhere between 4.4 and 4.10 this happened a couple times (though I can't remember the exact versions affected...)

[Robosole]

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6543

This bug has been open since Sep 28, 2019; Steam deletes things upon network errors. Seriously, Valve?

[cretsiah]

hhhmmm i thought i had more games installed originally than my library tells me..... why in the hell does it delete??? i might have to leave a game for a few weeks/ months at a time :( now i gotta redo half the games ..... I mainly only play the single player stuff, but sometimes i want to be in space, sometimes i want shoot/ blow stuff up, sometimes i just want to create...... BUT I DONT WANT MY SAVE FILES AND GAMES DELETED JUST BECAUSE I DIDNT TOUCH FOR AWHILE FFS....

[Marlock]

@cretsiah
is it really looking like it affects only games that have not been recently used? that may help pinpoint which of steam's functions triggers the issue...

[Robosole]

Originally posted by Marlock:

@cretsiah
is it really looking like it affects only games that have not been recently used? that may help pinpoint which of steam's functions triggers the issue...

I have had it delete games that were played today The bug reports seem to indicate it's caused by some failure to connect to Steam; It probably deletes games from a particular library when update/shader caching/etc. behaviors in that specific library are interrupted by the network error. In my experience, it has only done this to my default library, probably because it's first in line for updates before the error.

[Marlock]

then maybe there is a workaround: add a dummy library path as default instead of the important one

inconvenient as you'll need to remember to choose the right library target when installing new games, but less so than having them randomly deleted...

[Marlock]

maybe add at least one smallhsized bait game into it, just to be sure

[Marlock]

one more thing occured to me now... did you try disabling shader pre-caching in steam settings?

it might play a part in triggering the issue, since it requires big download sizes for several games every time a game, steam, kernel or gpu driver is updated

[Robosole]

Originally posted by Marlock:

one more thing occured to me now... did you try disabling shader pre-caching in steam settings?

it might play a part in triggering the issue, since it requires big download sizes for several games every time a game, steam, kernel or gpu driver is updated

I actually just did. I think Steam immediately starts shader updates at launch, whereas I don't think I have automatic game updates enabled, so perhaps disabling shader caching will reduce the frequency when this bug can be triggered.

[cretsiah]

OK interesting .... ( at least for me ) games themselves not deleted ...only the library menu entry and library location under settings of the games being installed...
seeme to also happen on a system reboot.
so when i go look at my folder (not the debian-install one) but the one i setup on second drive called Steam Library 2 all the games are still there..

if there is some terminal command i can try to use to launch a game from that specific folder , ill give that a whirl...

for command line instructions:
using mint xfce 20.1 if it helps i'd be using thunar > folder location >open terminal here

[Marlock]

Originally posted by cretsiah:

OK interesting .... ( at least for me ) games themselves not deleted ...only the library menu entry and library location under settings of the games being installed...
seeme to also happen on a system reboot.
so when i go look at my folder (not the debian-install one) but the one i setup on second drive called Steam Library 2 all the games are still there..

if you mount the drive first then run steam it should work fine... on thr other hand if you run steam first the games from the unmounted drive will appear as not installed, even if you mount the drive later... after that, only exiting then running steam again will force it to notice the mounted drive