Launcher Error: Trouble Communicating with Steam

[grotaclas]

I installed arch Linux in a virtualbox VM to see if that is a general arch Linux problem. But I never got the error message that the launcher can't communicate with steam. I tested it with Gnome on Wayland, Gnome-xorg, both with Chromium not installed, installed but not running and running. Which Desktop/Windowmanager do you use? And are you sure that you used the pacman version of steam and not the flatpak version?
To find out if it is something with your system or something with your user account, it would be good if you try it as a new user without copying over any files from your existing user account.

 

[Gamernick42]

I am using xmonad as my window manager. Pacman says that the steam package version is 1.0.0.62-1.

 

[grotaclas]

I tried xmonad and except some difficulty to get anything to run there, I had no problems with the launcher(I had to set eu4 to windowed mode to get it to run). I tried a few other things, but the only way I was able to get the "We had trouble communicating with Steam." message was by blocking port 57343 in the firewall(iptables).

@AndrewT do you know what could cause the "We had trouble communicating with Steam." in (Arch-) Linux?

 

[Gamernick42]

I tried to change port configurations on arch to open up port 57343. Having it OPEN or not in iptables did not change anything. Would I need to port forward my router?

How did you block that port exactly? I unblocked TCP, but maybe the connection requires UDP? ss -a | grep 57343 shows this

tcp   LISTEN     0      128                                                           127.0.0.1:57343                        0.0.0.0:*

 

[AndrewT]

I tried xmonad and except some difficulty to get anything to run there, I had no problems with the launcher(I had to set eu4 to windowed mode to get it to run). I tried a few other things, but the only way I was able to get the "We had trouble communicating with Steam." message was by blocking port 57343 in the firewall(iptables).

@AndrewT do you know what could cause the "We had trouble communicating with Steam." in (Arch-) Linux?

On Mac and Windows you usually have to do a clean reinstall of the game. I don't recall any such reports on Linux before though.

 

[grotaclas]

I tried to change port configurations on arch to open up port 57343. Having it OPEN or not in iptables did not change anything. Would I need to port forward my router?

How did you block that port exactly? I unblocked TCP, but maybe the connection requires UDP? ss -a | grep 57343 shows this

tcp   LISTEN     0      128                                                           127.0.0.1:57343                        0.0.0.0:*

In my test I blocked the port with the following command:

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --destination-port 57343  -j REJECT

You can use the -p option to the ss command to see if it is really steam that listens on port 57343. In my tests steam switches to another port if port 57343 is already in use.
Your router has no impact on this, because the connection happens internally on your computer(over the loopback network interface "lo").
In what way did you try to unblock the port? Maybe you can use the following commands(you have to execute them before any commands that might block the connection):

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --destination 127.0.0.1 --destination-port 57343  -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --destination 127.0.0.1 --destination-port 57343  -j ACCEPT

 

[Gamernick42]

Attached is the port listing from ss -p. Port 57343 is not used, yet steam is running.

Here is the output of iptables -L

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             localhost            tcp dpt:57343

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             localhost            tcp dpt:57343

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             localhost            tcp dpt:57343

Error remains the same, even after reinstalling.

 

[grotaclas]

Attached is the port listing from ss -p. Port 57343 is not used, yet steam is running.

I meant to use the -p together with the -a option that you used before. If you don't use -a or -l, you won't get programs which are just listening on their ports

Here is the output of iptables -L

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             localhost            tcp dpt:57343

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             localhost            tcp dpt:57343

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             localhost            tcp dpt:57343

Error remains the same, even after reinstalling.

From this output it doesn't seem that the port was blocked by iptables in the first place. The policy is ACCEPT which means that every packet will be accepted unless there is a special rule that does something else with it and the output doesn't list any such rules.

 

[Gamernick42]

Now with ss -pl, I do see that port 57343 is open. The file is with both steam and the paradox launcher running. EU4 still does not connect.

 

[grotaclas]

You could use another tool to connect to the steam port to see if there is something else that blocks it. For example:

telnet 127.0.0.1 57343

It should give you the message "Connected to 127.0.0.1." if it works and "telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused" if it doesn't (or a neverending "Trying 127.0.0.1..." if the packages get dropped)
If that works, try if using "localhost" instead of "127.0.0.1" also works. If it doesn't you might have configured localhost wrongly.

If these all work you could try to reinstall the launcher again by removing "~/.paradoxlauncher" and "~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/launcher-v2/" and the file "~/.local/share/Paradox Interactive/launcherpath". Maybe it was broken after all.

Or you could try to create a new user account on your computer and log in as that user and only run steam(which probably downloads a new local version) there and just install eu4. If you do that while you are not logged in with your normal user and didn't use any other programs with your new user(e.g. chromium), you can avoid any interference from configurations in your existing user account(e.g. chromium extensions).

 

[Gamernick42]

Telnet does connect to 127.0.0.1:57343.

Tried on a separate user and it worked with launcher 2019. I think it is time to start removing chromium extensions.

Edit: uninstalling some extensions and reinstalling EU4 does not change anything. Is there a way to force usage of the 2019 launcher?

 

[grotaclas]

Does the 2019 launcher work for the separate user and for your normal user? You can get it temporarily if you follow the launcher reinstall instructions that I posted above.
Does the 2020.6.2 launcher not work for your separate user?

BTW: does the steam connection work in eu4 when you start it directly? I noticed that you only get the "unable to locate a running instance of Steam" message when steam is not running, but it will fail silently when it fails to connect. But then all DLCs are shown as not owned if I hover over them in the single player menu and the in-game achievement list is unavailable if I start a new ironman game.
If the steam connection with eu4 is not actually working, maybe your steam installation is broken in some way. AFAIK every user has its own steam installation in ~/.steam . Maybe that is your problem and moving/removing the folder and letting steam reinstall itself helps.

 

[Gamernick42]

Reinstalling the entirety of steam worked. Now I can use it on my main user.