(Linux) Installer fails to detect games in native Steam if Steam Flatpak also installed

[Trebolt23]

Had been attempting to install chaudloader onto my Steam Deck for the sake of using the pixel font mod, but every attempt at running the installer results in it not being able to find my games. This is the case both for when installed to my SD card and when it's installed to the system memory.

Additionally, following the instructions for manual installation (moving the dll files into the .exe directories) has issues, as it results in neither the game nor chaudloader booting up when in Proton 7.0-6, instead crashing before reaching anything. I am actually able to launch just fine when not selecting a specific Proton version (chaudloader and all) but I'm unsure if that's due to the readme being outdated for current chaudloader versions or an update to MMBNLC/Steam.

It's entirely possible I was doing something wrong, but I'm genuinely unsure where that point of failure would be. If you need any more information from me, please let me know and I'll be happy to oblige.

[Prof9]

I just tested this by completely uninstalling MMBNLC Vol. 1 and 2 from my Steam Deck and deleting the steamapps folders for them, then reinstalling the games via Steam, downloading the latest chaudloader from GitHub and running it. It was able to locate both volumes and install chaudloader successfully. For the record, I'm using SteamOS 3.6.24 (beta channel).

So whatever is causing the installer to not be able to locate the games for you seems to be a local issue. I suppose we could update the steamlocate crate and see if that helps any.

As for the Proton version selection, this game was released when Proton 7.0 was the latest stable Proton version, and it used to be that when Proton 8.0 stable first came out (and was now the default Proton version used by the game), trying to run chaudloader with that would cause it to crash on startup.

I just tried myself and it does seem like chaudloader now no longer boots with Proton 7.0-6:

Proton version	Boots?
Not selected	Yes
9.0-4	Yes
8.0-5	Yes
7.0-6	No
6.3-8	No

So I guess I'll update that part of the readme.

Thanks for reporting!

[Prof9]

Could you try this build and see if it works for you?

chaudloader-v0.13.0-163f742-linux.zip

[Trebolt23]

Could you try this build and see if it works for you?

chaudloader-v0.13.0-163f742-linux.zip

The install.desktop on this one has an orange exclamation mark next to it and doesn't seem to launch normally, bringing up a "This will start the program. If you do not trust the program, click Cancel." window (if these are normal due to being a dev build of the program then feel free to ignore). After hitting Continue, a Konsole window flashes for a second before disappearing, and there don't seem to be any changes to anything.

[Prof9]

Since it's a .zip file rather than the usual .tar.bz2, you'll need to give the files execute permission first.

Open a terminal in the folder where you extracted the files and run chmod +x install.*. Then you should be able to click install.desktop as normal.

[Trebolt23]

Same issue, unfortunately. The command goes through fine, but attempting to launch install.desktop still results in a Konsole window flashing before closing immediately.

[Prof9]

Can you open a terminal in the directory that holds the install files, run ./install-cli from the terminal directly, and copy the output here?

[Trebolt23]

(1)(deck@treboltdeck chaudloader-v0.13.0-163f742-linux)$ chmod +x install.*
(deck@treboltdeck chaudloader-v0.13.0-163f742-linux)$ ./install-cli
bash: ./install-cli: Permission denied
(126)(deck@treboltdeck chaudloader-v0.13.0-163f742-linux)$

[Prof9]

Oops, I'm stupid - that install.* should be install* (without the period), as the file is named install-cli. Could you try this?

chmod +x install*
./install-cli

If that still yields a 'permission denied':

chmod +x install-cli
./install-cli

[Trebolt23]

So I was actually able to run the commands just fine this time, but it's unfortunately still not detecting either installation.

[TimeTravelingKnight]

VdfFinder
You can try this out. It'll copy your vdf from the steam directory the program is trying to read from. You can upload it and we can verify if you perhaps have a corrupted vdf or multiple steam directories and the one we're reading from doesn't have LC.

[Trebolt23]

Do I just run ./findvdf in the chaudloader folder? I'm not seeing an output file of any kind, unless it makes changes to findvdf itself and I just reupload that.

[TimeTravelingKnight]

You can run it anywhere. It'll output your library file that we have been reading.

This is mine for example.
"libraryfolders"
{
"0"
{
"path" "/home/timetravelingknight/.local/share/Steam"
"label" ""
"contentid" "1839885550757556917"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "889891750"
"time_last_update_verified" "1744212400"
"apps"
{
"228980" "132143724"
"999020" "4223402528"
"1391110" "649883581"
"1493710" "1219821642"
"1580130" "1107672033"
"1628350" "768802570"
"1798020" "2348666791"
"1887720" "1098535663"
"2180100" "1217490959"
"2348590" "1224814506"
"2805730" "1191912829"
}
}
}

[Trebolt23]

Doesn't seem like it's actually creating any output. The "Copied" pops up so it's definitely running, but no other file appears in the folder.