[Linux] Can't start v1.7

[_karl_]

If I roll-back to v1.6.2 (in Steam's betas) everything works as it used to.

The first time I ran the game in v1.7.x it took a long time, showing it was compiling the shaders, and it eventually crashed before reaching the menu. When I tried again, sometimes I do reach the menu and it crashes a few seconds later, sometimes it crashes before that, on the loading screen. In any case, the error logs don't seem to contain any interesting information (see attachment). In particular none of these OOM messages other players got. And the crashes directory only contains an empty meta.yaml file, as empty as error.log.

If I run the victoria3 ELF directly, without the launcher, I see a SIGSEGV. I can catch it with gdb but I have no debugging symbols for the back-trace.

PS: no mods, files verified.
PS2: looking retrospectively at the graphs of my system monitor, I was quite far from being OOM

 

[AndrewT]

I see you're on Debian; FYI the only supported distro is Ubuntu. But let's see what we can do here anyway.

Despite your memory findings, what is the state of your swap/paging file? In Windows we're finding we need 32gb for this game.

the error logs don't seem to contain any interesting information (see attachment)

Is there no actual error.log?

 

[_karl_]

Is there no actual error.log?

There is a file, but it's 0 byte long and it's old enough so that it has probably been generated by an earlier attempt, not by the latest crash:

$ ls .local/share/Paradox\ Interactive/Victoria\ 3/logs/ -ltr | tail -n 20
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien     65  6 juil. 13:45 dedicated_server.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien    481  6 juil. 13:45 custom_automated_stats.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien   1324  6 juil. 13:46 multiplayer.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien      0  6 juil. 13:54 error.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien      0  6 juil. 13:54 custom_automated_stats.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien      0  6 juil. 13:54 multiplayer.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien      0  6 juil. 13:54 dedicated_server.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien   1247  6 juil. 13:54 code_revisions.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien    976  6 juil. 13:54 system.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien   4996  6 juil. 13:54 text.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien  45056  6 juil. 13:57 game.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien      0  6 juil. 14:00 graphics.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien   1247  6 juil. 14:00 code_revisions.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien      0  6 juil. 14:00 checksum.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien      0  6 juil. 14:00 ai.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien    976  6 juil. 14:00 system.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien   4996  6 juil. 14:00 text.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien  12288  6 juil. 14:00 gui.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien 212992  6 juil. 14:01 debug.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 julien julien  45056  6 juil. 14:01 game.log

Despite your memory findings, what is the state of your swap/paging file? In Windows we're finding we need 32gb for this game.

I have 16 GB of actual RAM plus 32 GB of swap.
In past versions I "needed" to close Chrome and everything before launching the game, otherwise sometimes the memory was a bit tight, but doing so was more or less guaranteeing that I would not use the swap.

I just ran Vicky3 once again with SAR turned on. Here is what I get:

23:59:11    kbmemfree   kbavail kbmemused  %memused kbbuffers  kbcached  kbcommit   %commit  kbactive   kbinact   kbdirty
23:59:16      4235804  10314428   4773996     29,27    772132   5778540  14063200     28,28   3814412   6244792       668
23:59:21      3949752  10155384   4916336     30,14    773248   5920832  14354840     28,87   3871196   6477168      1596
23:59:26      4185208  10392968   4673416     28,65    773388   5928336  13186856     26,52   3981476   6128892      1136
23:59:31      4050600  10319388   4746460     29,10    777224   5985180  13135768     26,42   3985680   6236416      1384
23:59:36      4011948  10306864   4758812     29,18    779776   6007996  13205836     26,56   3988324   6268844      2844
23:59:41      3973760  10299424   4766428     29,22    781256   6037056  13132248     26,41   3989840   6315900      4064
23:59:46      3672344  10114712   4951160     30,36    781676   6153284  13177804     26,50   3990312   6614948      4280
23:59:51      3298896   9852332   5213520     31,97    782068   6263860  13265156     26,68   4088068   6894848      4620
23:59:56      3088132   9731560   5334168     32,71    782360   6353632  13206580     26,56   4111320   7082276       956
...
00:04:56       239084   4579556  10503732     64,40    412412   4567672  13822528     27,80   2722344  11744920         0
00:05:01       371536   4114984  10839320     66,46    394648   4123404  13788936     27,73   2700188  11558100       260
00:05:06       206276   3995684  11090620     68,00    389816   4042780  13791884     27,74   2622492  11824640         8
00:05:11       330464   3839908  11245328     68,95    369976   3785476  13763652     27,68   2482904  11868484       176
00:05:16       220624   3824488  11257740     69,02    366024   3888208  13887420     27,93   2492528  12005144        44
00:05:21      6946692  10603548   4501616     27,60    357684   3928320  13228056     26,60   2469188   5367352        20
00:05:26      7014648  10702224   4530384     27,78    358692   3830512  13102948     26,35   2460492   5291388       704
00:05:31      7000704  10690448   4543468     27,86    358712   3831604  13105148     26,35   2461688   5288552       768
00:05:36      7030660  10720556   4515532     27,69    358784   3829528  13015188     26,17   2478376   5245060       968

Unfortunately I forgot to turn on the swap monitoring options, but you do see that when the program crashes (05:16, when I am on the main menu, which blinks for one or two seconds and makes weird colours) I am still using only 69% of my physical RAM and my kernel only committed 28% of my RAM+swap (while in reality it was using less). That's the load for the whole system, not just the Victoria process.
So for me it's definitely not an OOM error.

Btw, this time I did get an error.log. It contains this:

[00:05:10][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:10][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:11][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:13][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:14][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:16][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:17][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:17][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:17][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:17][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:18][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:18][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:18][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:19][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:19][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:19][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1
[00:05:20][pdx_persistent_reader.cpp:252]: Error: "Failed to read key reference: autonomous_investment_pool: autonomous_investment_pool, near line: 1" in file: "" near line: 1

I already had some of those in my first attempts. Actually more of them, which I suppressed by removing my local saved games.

 

[AndrewT]

As you say, this does now not seem like an OOM problem. Your cpu is adequate, if not up to the recommended level, but that should not be causing crashes of course. And your GPU is more than capable!

Are your Radeon AMD driver and Mesa version up to date?

 

[_karl_]

Are your Radeon AMD driver and Mesa version up to date?

I could update Mesa a tiny bit, to 24.0.8-1. I will try later tonight. But this v23 from January-Feb shouldn't be too old.

julien@jeannot:~$ apt show xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu
Package: xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu
Version: 23.0.0-1
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Maintainer: Debian X Strike Force <debian-x@lists.debian.org>
Installed-Size: 259 kB
Provides: xorg-driver-video
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.17), libdrm-amdgpu1 (>= 2.4.73), libgbm1 (>= 8.1~0), libudev1 (>= 183), xorg-video-abi-25, xserver-xorg-core (>= 2:21.1.1)
Suggests: firmware-amd-graphics
Download-Size: 136 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian trixie/main amd64 Packages

julien@jeannot:~$ dpkg -l xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu
Souhait=inconnU/Installé/suppRimé/Purgé/H=à garder
| État=Non/Installé/fichier-Config/dépaqUeté/échec-conFig/H=semi-installé/W=attend-traitement-déclenchements
|/ Err?=(aucune)/besoin Réinstallation (État,Err: majuscule=mauvais)
||/ Nom                       Version      Architecture Description
+++-=========================-============-============-=======================================
ii  xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu 23.0.0-1     amd64        X.Org X server -- AMDGPU display driver
julien@jeannot:~$ dpkg -l xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu mesa-vulkan-drivers
Souhait=inconnU/Installé/suppRimé/Purgé/H=à garder
| État=Non/Installé/fichier-Config/dépaqUeté/échec-conFig/H=semi-installé/W=attend-traitement-déclenchements
|/ Err?=(aucune)/besoin Réinstallation (État,Err: majuscule=mauvais)
||/ Nom                       Version      Architecture Description
+++-=========================-============-============-=======================================
ii  mesa-vulkan-drivers:amd64 23.3.5-1     amd64        Mesa Vulkan graphics drivers
ii  mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386  23.3.5-1     i386         Mesa Vulkan graphics drivers
ii  xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu 23.0.0-1     amd64        X.Org X server -- AMDGPU display driver

 

[_karl_]

I just apt update'd and rebooted.
So I have a Debian Trixie (aka testing) totally up-to-date.
The driver hasn't actually changed but I got a new kernel and so on.
The game still crashes at startup.

 

[AndrewT]

I am sorry then, I don't see anything else to suggest. We've seen no clues as to even what general area the problem is in, other than ruling out memory!

Any chance you can switch to Ubuntu?