Most SteamVR tools are broken

[okawo80085]

Game information
SteamVR is Valve's VR runtime.

Distribution name and version where applicable
Fedora 35 Workstation

Flatpak info

$ flatpak --version
Flatpak 1.12.7
$ flatpak --gl-drivers
nvidia-510-60-02
default
host

Problem description
SteamVR has some utilities for developers, from which vrpathreg does not work.
More info can be found here, altho on Linux its started by vrpathreg.sh from <steam path>/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin (SteamVR can not be installed separately from Steam)

And here is the actual problem:

$ ./vrpathreg.sh
Unable to read path registry
$ echo $?
255

Also if the Steam client's root directory is not symbolically linked to ~/.steam/root it refuses to run at all. Most of open source SteamVR drivers rely on ~/.steam/root for setup, pretty important to have imo.

Other utilities might be broken too, i just didn't get around to testing the others yet.

Does this issue reproduce with native Steam
No

[HadetTheUndying]

Have you been able to get any SteamVR games to even launch with the flatpak? I haven't tried this in quite awhile.

[okawo80085]

Well no, because i can't finish SteamVR's setup, that requires super user permissions, but flatpak version of Steam straight up does not allow that

[PureTryOut]

@okawo80085 you're experiencing #898 and I've mentioned a workaround in there. With that I can at least launch and play Beat Saber.

[okawo80085]

@okawo80085 you're experiencing #898 and I've mentioned a workaround in there. With that I can at least launch and play Beat Saber.

Its not just that, the tools shipped with SteamVR rely on the fact that ~/.steam exists and contains files and symlinks used by those tools, i need those tools to even start my setup (e.g. i need to register my driver, because it's external and needs to be registered before use)

[HadetTheUndying]

@okawo80085 you're experiencing #898 and I've mentioned a workaround in there. With that I can at least launch and play Beat Saber.

Its not just that, the tools shipped with SteamVR rely on the fact that ~/.steam exists and contains files and symlinks used by those tools, i need those tools to even start my setup (e.g. i need to register my driver, because it's external and needs to be registered before use)

What's the outcome if you manually create those symlinks and use setcap to override the need for sudo? It'd be nice to know if that fixes things because then all that would need to be done is change some of the default perms for the app.

[okawo80085]

What's the outcome if you manually create those symlinks and use setcap to override the need for sudo? It'd be nice to know if that fixes things because then all that would need to be done is change some of the default perms for the app.

I had to nuke that system, i'll install flask steam and try that this weekend.

[okawo80085]

So i got a bit distracted with war and completely forgot about to make a comment with more details, this issue is still present :)

The most notable symptom of it is that vrsetup.sh fails on SteamVR start, in particular it fails on a dialog asking for superuser permissions to set some caps which makes the performance of apps like VRChat a bit worse.

Steps to reproduce:

1. have flatpak steam running
2. run this:

flatpak enter <steam instance id> /home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrpathreg.sh show

However the funny thing is that if i run it not using flatpak enter from my host, vrpathreg.sh does not fail, but it picks up vr registry from SteamVR installed with native Steam, not flatpak's one

Is there any way to at least fix the vrsetup.sh superuser issue? Because it failing like that causes some stuttering and its annoying :/

Full log from vrsetup.sh failing on SteamVR startup:

vrstartup.sh[26186]: === Thu May  2 10:44:58 PM EEST 2024 ===
vrstartup.sh[26186]: ERROR: no steam runtime environment set, please use sniper SLR
vrstartup-helper.sh[26195]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrenv.sh /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrstartup-helper.sh
vrenv.sh[26195]: VRCOMPOSITOR_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/<user>:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/qt/lib:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64
vrenv.sh[26195]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrstartup-helper.sh
vrstartup-helper.sh[26195]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/vrstartup
vrenv.sh[31175]: VRCOMPOSITOR_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrwebhelper/linux64:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/qt/lib:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64:
vrenv.sh[31175]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/../vrmonitor.sh vrmonitor://quit
vrsetup.sh[31352]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrenv.sh /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh
vrenv.sh[31352]: VRCOMPOSITOR_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/<user>:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/qt/lib:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64
vrenv.sh[31352]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh
vrsetup.sh[31352]: Relaunching under scout LDLP runtime.
vrsetup.sh[31352]: exec /home/<user>/.steam/bin/steam-runtime/run.sh /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh
vrsetup.sh[31352]: Detected scout LDLP runtime.
vrsetup.sh[31352]: Error: user declined superuser request.
vrsetup.sh[31399]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrenv.sh /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh --help
vrenv.sh[31399]: VRCOMPOSITOR_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/<user>:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/qt/lib:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64
vrenv.sh[31399]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh --help
vrsetup.sh[31399]: Relaunching under scout LDLP runtime.
vrsetup.sh[31399]: exec /home/<user>/.steam/bin/steam-runtime/run.sh /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh
vrsetup.sh[31399]: Detected scout LDLP runtime.
vrsetup.sh[31399]: Error: user declined superuser request.
vrenv.sh[14193]: VRCOMPOSITOR_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/<user>:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/qt/lib:/home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64
vrenv.sh[14193]: exec /home/<user>/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrpathreg.sh
vrenv.sh[14676]: VRCOMPOSITOR_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR:/home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/qt/lib:/home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64
vrenv.sh[14676]: exec /home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrpathreg.sh show
vrsetup.sh[14745]: exec /home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrenv.sh /home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh
vrenv.sh[14745]: VRCOMPOSITOR_LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR:/home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/qt/lib:/home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64
vrenv.sh[14745]: exec /home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh
vrsetup.sh[14745]: Relaunching under scout LDLP runtime.
vrsetup.sh[14745]: exec /home/<user>/.steam/bin/steam-runtime/run.sh /home/<user>/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrsetup.sh
vrsetup.sh[14745]: Detected scout LDLP runtime.
vrsetup.sh[14745]: Error: user declined superuser request.

[okawo80085]

With the latest SteamVR update, the fact that the setup env script cannot run/fails to run is causing SteamVR to crash on launch 🫠