Update (Improved Solution)

I have posted a better solution here: elza.me/blog/2016/06/Steam/

Original Post

If you are running Steam on linux you may very well run into the situation where your client fails to start after a system upgrade. Today when I started steam I was greeted with the following:

$ steam
Running Steam on arch rolling 64-bit
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1411443970)
libGL error: unable to load driver: r600_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: r600
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

We are unable to load the necessary drivers. All too often this is to due to a symlink being broken. Below is a fix given the above error output.

$ cd .local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/
$ mv libstdc++.so.6.0.18 libstdc++.so.6.0.18.remove
$ rm libstdc++.so.6

$ cd ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
$ mv libstdc++.so.6.0.18 libstdc++.so.6.0.18.remove
$ rm libstdc++.so.6

In each directory we are renaming libstdc++.so.6.0.18 so it is no longer used, but keeping it in case we need it later. We then remove the symbolic link that went to libstdc++.so.6.0.18. Now when you start your Steam client again, it should download the needed drivers automatically.

Happy gaming!


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