Steam client on Gentoo stops with GL errors

I use the Steam client on Gentoo Linux and recently it stopped working which meant I had TF2 withdrawal :-)

I'm not a programmer so this may be a bad way to fix things but it worked for me. YMMV.

It all started when you launch the steam client it brings up a dialog:

OpenGL GLX context is not using direct rendering, which may cause performance problems

TF2 would not even launch :-(

Launching from a terminal gave me

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


After searching through all sorts of things I found an article  about MatLab but with similar errors.

 After doing the:

export LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose

things started to make sense.

libGL: screen 0 does not appear to be DRI3 capable
libGL: pci id for fd 7: 1002:68b8, driver r600
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/r600_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/r600_dri.so
libGL: dlopen /usr/lib/dri/r600_dri.so failed (/home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.20' not found (required by /usr/lib/dri/r600_dri.so))
libGL error: unable to load driver: r600_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: r600
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so
libGL: dlopen /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.20' not found (required by /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so))
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so


The libstdc++ in the Steam directory was

 
ls -al /home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nick users 19 Jul 19  2014 /home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 -> libstdc++.so.6.0.18

but the r600 driver was now built with

ls /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.2/libstdc++.so.6*
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.2/libstdc++.so.6  /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.2/libstdc++.so.6.0.20

So can you just link the one outside the Steam directory? Delete the link and try..


rm /home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6
ln -s /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.2/libstdc++.so.6.0.20 /home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6



Let's try steam


libGL: screen 0 does not appear to be DRI3 capable
libGL: pci id for fd 7: 1002:68b8, driver r600
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/r600_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/r600_dri.so


It says not DRI3 capable but I thoguth it was but no biggie.  No dialog about OpenGL. Getting excited... Launched TF2.  No error straight away and it worked! I was back in Pyro land :-)


Update: I recently made the jump to 64 bit Gentoo and the link command is now different but otherwise it just worked again.

ln -s /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.3/libstdc++.6 /home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6

A second link is needed to make some games go (such as Outlast) I'm guessing these are 64 bit

ln -s /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu/4.9.3/libstdc++.6 /home/nick/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6