How is steam normally ran?

[Bladesy]

Hello everyone, I wonder if my query is a bit too simple for this forum, but I have been following all the steps on the Gentoo Wiki in order to install steam, and have found myself a problem.
The steps say to gather installation files, which involves creating an executable steam file and then running it, which seems to install the application. However, whenever I close down the instance of steam that came up with the installer, I can't seem to find how to launch my installed steam. I tried running the same steam file, which made me reinstall it.
Is this how steam is normally ran?
Surely it must have actually installed somewhere - how do I run this installed version of steam?
Does it have a name that I can enter into the terminal?
Finally, is it safe to remove the files that were used for installation?
Thanks in advance for your help.

[Keruskerfuerst]

Check out, where steam is installed (e.g. /bin, /usr/bin) and then execute ./steam.

[Linubie]

[Bladesy]

I've tried searching through those locations, but I haven't found anything steam-related. I tried running

[Bladesy]

I think I've found where steam installs, which would be ~/.steam. I guess I forgot to use the -a option the first time I was searching. However, there are many versions of the steam executable, and even a steam.sh executable. None of these locations show with whereis steam. I should also note that whenever I try to run any, I always get "FatalError: Failed to load steamui.so".
The script steam installation script works when I'm running it as root, and manages to launch the program. I'll post it incase it offers any clues as to where my steam executable is:

[Chewi]

I guess you chose the manual installation route? I recommend steam-overlay, it works very well here.

[Bladesy]

I didn't actually choose manual installation, even though it was somewhat hands-on. From the Gentoo Wiki, I first made a file listing all of steam's dependencies, then followed the steps for installation from the debian package - which involved taking out certain files from it, then running the script I posted above.

[Bladesy]

This whole situation is very confusing - there seems to be a copy of "~/.steam/root" in "~/.local/share/Steam", which the installation script seems to reference. However, I get a different error when I run the steam.sh script contained there:

[Chewi]

I don't think you're supposed to run it as root and that's very dangerous, especially in light of a recent Steam bug that could effectively delete all your files. Seriously, delete ~/.steam and ~/.local/share/Steam and start again using steam-overlay. This method is designed to work on Gentoo and is arguably less hacky.

[Bladesy]

Thanks for the help, I'll try overlay instead - I would've tried it as soon as you suggested it, but I wasn't actually sure how to get rid of the steam I just installed.

[Bladesy]

I hope its not to late to return to this thread, but I'm having trouble with the installation. I installed layman, but when the Gentoo Wiki told me to type "layman-updater -R", the terminal told me that it wasn't a command. I settled on just typing "layman-updater", which didn't prompt me with any errors. So I continued onto the steam-overlay page, and entered "layman -a steam-overlay", which didn't seem to work. I get the feeling that I'm supposed to have the package on my machine already, but I'm not sure how to do so. I'll post the error below:

[Bladesy]

I think I solved my previous problem, but more seem to arise:

[Chewi]

It is generally useful to have X in your USE flags. This is telling you that you at least need to add it against x11-libs/gtk+. Because you passed --ask, it should have asked you if you wanted it to make this change for you? Admittedly I'm not overly familiar with that feature yet.

[Bladesy]

Thank you very much, it seems to be installing now. Hopefully the overlay works fine.

[Bladesy]

I launched the overlay by typing steam, and it worked the first time - I then closed the window to see if it would go through the initial setup phase like the last method of installation did. However, the program only opened a small loading screen which quickly shut, and I got this as an output:

[Chewi]

I have found that it's not unusual to see a whole load of scary-looking output, even segmentation faults, while running Steam. Sometimes it fails to launch the first time and I have to fire it up again. You seem to have left the steamruntime USE flag enabled. Although disabling it is not supported by upstream and the README says that only advanced users should disable it, I think doing so makes it work more reliably. You can give it a try at least.

This must seem like a pain but what you have to remember is that Steam is only officially supported on Ubuntu.

[Bladesy]

Will adding -steamruntime to the USE variable at /etc/portage/make.conf work, or do I have to use package.use?

[Chewi]

I just set it in make.conf.

[Bladesy]

It's still only showing the "Updating Steam, Verifying Installation" message box, then it closes. I tried adding -steamruntime, then tried steamruntime, and then just nothing - it gives the same result.

[Bladesy]

I also noticed that it always said "STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically", even if I added -steamruntime.

[Bladesy]

I get the same result when disabling the runtime, just a slightly different error message:

[Chewi]

Did you rebuild anything after adding -steamruntime? emerge -N steam-meta should do this if you haven't. Running out of ideas other than that, maybe try removing ~fractured/.local/share/Steam to give yourself a clean slate. I think the files were installed as root the first time I told you to delete it?

[Bladesy]

I deleted all of the old files from the last install, but I didn't rebuild at all - I'll try that now.

[Bladesy]

The rebuild didn't work, but I removed the steam folder, ran emerge steam-meta as root, then ran steam as a user - and it told me it couldn't find steam content, and gave me the option of reinstalling. Now I can log into my account like the very first time I installed. Is there any way I should be closing steam? Last time I closed I used Mod+Shift+c, and after that the errors arose every time I tried to launch steam from then on.

[Chewi]

Mod+Shift+c? Using xmonad? I dunno, I just click Exit in the menu.