BATTLETECH - Clean linux install of Battletech crashes without generating Player.log

[Martenzo]

One line summary of your issue
Clean linux install of Battletech crashes without generating Player.log

What platform are you running the game on?

Steam

What operating system do you use?
Linux
Which version of the game are you running?
1.9.1
What DLC do you have installed?
Flashpoint,
Urban Warfare,
Shadowhawk Pack,
Heavy Metal

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
Following the release of 1.9 in early March, BT started glitching out graphically on launch and displaying a solid-color screen that was rapidly flickering between red, white and black until it it eventually crashed about 20 seconds in.
At the time, it coincided with installing a number of updates to my system, including kernel and driver update. Thus I figured it was a kernel/drivers issue and tried reinstalling both my drivers and BT several times to no result. This notion was reinforced by another game of mine, Total War: Warhammer 2, which warns about requiring Vulkan support in its launcher breaking around the same time, also crashing on launch following the driver update (though it produced only a brief black screen, not flickering).

Eventually just gave up on this issue and decided to wait for another driver update to be released. Now, a new driver update was released a few days ago and after installing it, TWWH2 was fixed by the new driver. This prompted me to come back to the BT issue as well.

In the interim, I had uninstalled BT entirely and made as clean a reinstall as possible. BT was not fixed by this and now crashes immediately upon launch with only the following lines (which I only see when I launch the game directly from the command line)

~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/BATTLETECH$ ./BattleTech
munmap_chunk(): invalid pointer
Aborted (core dumped)
~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/BATTLETECH$

The folder ~/.config/unity3d/Harebrained Schemes/ does not exist, and is not generated upon launching Battletech, either from Steam or directly from command line.
Likewise, the folder ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/BATTLETECH/DumpBox/ does not exist.
Have you tried verifying your files?
Yes

Steps to reproduce the issue
No specific steps. Clean install crashes immediately on launch.

 

[AndrewT]

If the game does not even create the player.log file or the folder it is in, the problem is very very early in the startup process and so is almost certainly something outside the game doing it.

Hard to guess from that command line output what that might be.

What distro is this? What video driver are you using?

Is this the same issue you had back in early March, or these are different symptoms?

 

[Martenzo]

These are completely different symptoms. The problem in early March was causing a flickering screen that crashed after a short while, but did produce all the usual logs. This is an instant crash that produces no application window at all, just those two error lines in the console.

Here are the basic system specs, including OS. In case they're not easily found in the uploaded specs.txt

System:    Host: marten-Desktop Kernel: 4.15.0-91-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 7.4.0
           Desktop: Cinnamon 4.2.4 wm: muffin dm: LightDM Distro: Linux Mint 19.2 Tina
           base: Ubuntu 18.04 bionic
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: All Series v: N/A serial: <filter>
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: H81M-PLUS v: Rev X.0x serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends
           v: 0804 date: 01/06/2014
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-4790 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Haswell
           rev: 3 L2 cache: 8192 KiB
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 57566
           Speed: 1500 MHz min/max: 800/4000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1500 2: 1500 3: 1500
           4: 1497 5: 1500 6: 1500 7: 1499 8: 1499
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] vendor: Gigabyte
           driver: amdgpu v: 5.4.7.20.10 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:67ff
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.5 driver: amdgpu unloaded: modesetting
           alternate: ati,fbdev,vesa resolution: 1680x1050~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Radeon RX 560 Series v: 4.6.13594 Core Profile Context 20.10
           compat-v: 4.6.13594 direct render: Yes
Info:      Processes: 274 Uptime: 3m Memory: 15.60 GiB used: 1.22 GiB (7.8%) Init: systemd v: 237
          runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 7.5.0 alt: 7 Client: Unknown python3.6 client inxi: 3.0.32

 

[whymakemedothis]

I'm not sure but it looks like you are using amdgpu-pro not mesa. If that is the case the general consensus is that the amdgpu-pro opengl implementation is inferior to mesa which could explain why you are having problems.

I'm using mesa with a rx570 and I have no problems running either Battletech or Warhammer 2 so if you aren't using it you could try removing amdgpu-pro and see if it helps.

 

[AndrewT]

I agree that's the first thing to try, althouhg I would have expected a player.log even so ...

 

[Martenzo]

I'm not sure but it looks like you are using amdgpu-pro not mesa. If that is the case the general consensus is that the amdgpu-pro opengl implementation is inferior to mesa which could explain why you are having problems.

I'm using mesa with a rx570 and I have no problems running either Battletech or Warhammer 2 so if you aren't using it you could try removing amdgpu-pro and see if it helps.

The drivers from AMD's site were indeed at fault (possibly because mesa was ALSO installed independently of those).

Problem resolved. BT once again launches as expected. Thanks for the help