Ubuntu – Error on executing steam proton app via command-line

command linegamessteam

I'd like to launch a proton app installed via steam but without using steam.

the point being I can make my own command-line launcher and pass parameters etc…

since I'm entirely new to this I don't know by which horn to grab the bull.

will I be able to course through steam's lib or will I be forced to install my own separate version of proton?

Here's the system info steam gathered of my system :

Computer Information:
    Manufacturer:  Unknown
    Model:  Unknown
    Form Factor: Desktop
    No Touch Input Detected

Processor Information:
    CPU Vendor:  GenuineIntel
    CPU Brand:         Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz
    CPU Family:  0x6
    CPU Model:  0x2d
    CPU Stepping:  0x7
    CPU Type:  0x0
    Speed:  3800 Mhz
    12 logical processors
    6 physical processors
    HyperThreading:  Supported
    FCMOV:  Supported
    SSE2:  Supported
    SSE3:  Supported
    SSSE3:  Supported
    SSE4a:  Unsupported
    SSE41:  Supported
    SSE42:  Supported
    AES:  Supported
    AVX:  Supported
    CMPXCHG16B:  Supported
    LAHF/SAHF:  Supported
    PrefetchW:  Unsupported

Operating System Version:
    Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (64 bit)
    Kernel Name:  Linux
    Kernel Version:  4.15.0-33-generic
    X Server Vendor:  The X.Org Foundation
    X Server Release:  11906000
    X Window Manager:  GNOME Shell
    Steam Runtime Version:  steam-runtime-beta-release_2018-06-14

Video Card:
    Driver:  NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 760/PCIe/SSE2
    Driver Version:  4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.48
    OpenGL Version: 4.6
    Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
    Monitor Refresh Rate: 60 Hz
    VendorID:  0x10de
    DeviceID:  0x1187
    Revision Not Detected
    Number of Monitors:  2
    Number of Logical Video Cards:  1
    Primary Display Resolution:  1920 x 1080
    Desktop Resolution: 1920 x 1080
    Primary Display Size: 20.04" x 11.26" (22.95" diag)
                                            50.9cm x 28.6cm (58.3cm diag)
    Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
    Primary VRAM: 2048 MB
    Supported MSAA Modes:  2x 4x 8x 16x 

Sound card:
    Audio device: Realtek ALC898

Memory:
    RAM:  15988 Mb

Miscellaneous:
    UI Language:  English
    LANG:  en_US.UTF-8
    Total Hard Disk Space Available:  491396 Mb
    Largest Free Hard Disk Block:  250110 Mb
    VR Headset: None detected

Recent Failure Reports:

The specific game I'm trying to run is Supreme Commander Forged Alliance and it runs fine via steam.

I don't know why people have been giving it garbage steam play reports on the steam play compatibility site but personally; it runs perfectly:

https://spcr.netlify.com/app/9420

all I have to do is press alt–F4 two times and wait a lot to trick the main menu into showing up and past the main menu there are no bugs at all the in-game experience is fluid and stable.

but yeah, that game's entire online community is on FAF not on steam, both FAF python and FAF java run naively on Linux nowadays for the final key is getting java-FAF to make the correct proton calls to Forged Alliance for the game to fully work 🙂

Guide to get to where I'm at :

To install FAF :

cd /faf

and run FAF :

downlords-faf-client

./downlords-faf-client

now you should have FAF started. If you do not have an account you may create one.

after this, you can go into FAF's settings and there you can configure run folder and run arguments for FA.

Update :

I've since made a guide for how to set up FAF : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv3ZXA4FNFk

Best Answer

Proton/SteamPlay's wine is located in ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton*

Your game's wineprefix is located in ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/$appid/pfx, you can find the $appid in ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/$your-game/steam_appid.txt (to use it, set the WINEPREFIX environment variable to that path)

Edit: Your game files are located in ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/$your-game

To run a *.exe file with Proton you can use the following commands:

Change working directory to Proton's:

cd ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton*

Run the executable, for example:

STEAM_COMPAT_DATA_PATH="$HOME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/$appid" ./proton run dist/lib/wine/fakedlls/cmd.exe

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to get Proton on Steam to work

You can activate Steam Play by doing:

Update Steam to the latest version.
Open Steam > Settings.
Go to Steam Play.
Enable all checkboxes.
Save the settings and restart Steam.

Ubuntu – Error on executing Steam Play game via command-line (Proton)

Here's an experiment that may help you get the answer. For convenience, I'll refer to your default Steam library location as $STEAM (the default is ~/.local/share/Steam/). Proton is installed by default to $STEAM/steamapps/common/Proton 3.7, I'll call this $PROTON.

So, when I tried running The Witcher, Steam ran this command:

"$PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader" "$PROTON/dist/bin/wine" "Z:\$STEAM\steamapps\common\The Witcher Enhanced Edition\System\witcher.exe"

Where $STEAM has backslashes instead of slashes, as it's a Windows path. In addition, it set something like 70 environment variables (related to Wine, Steam, various hardware/drivers, libraries, etc.). A single variable, WINESERVERSOCKET referred to the wine server started for this instance. If I omitted this variable and used all the rest, I could start the game from the command line.

Steps:

Replace $PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader with a wrapper script that saves the environment somewhere:

PROTON="$HOME/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton 3.7" # adjust to your settings
mv "$PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader" "$PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader-orig"
printf "%s\n" '#! /bin/sh' 'env --null | grep -vz WINESERVERSOCKET > ~/env' > "$PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader"
printf 'exec %q "$@"\n' "$PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader-orig" >> "$PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader"
chmod +x "$PROTON/dist/bin/wine-preloader"

The script is essentially this:

#! /bin/sh
env --null | grep -vz WINESERVERSOCKET= > ~/env
printf "%s\0" "$0"-orig "$@" > ~/cmd
exec /home/user/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton\ 3.7/dist/bin/wine-preloader-orig "$@"

It saves the environment, except for WINESERVERSOCKET, in ~/env, the command to run and arguments in ~/cmd and runs the actual file with the arguments provided. It uses ASCII null characters to separate everything, since the actual environment variables may contain newlines.

Note that I save the command with -orig added for convenience.

Run the game from the Steam GUI. The wrapper script will create these files.
You can load the environment and run the command from these files. In bash
```
mapfile -d '' -t env < ~/env
mapfile -d '' -t cmd < ~/cmd
env "${env[@]}" "${cmd[@]}"
```
-d '' here tells bash the files use the ASCII null character as delimiter.

This much was sufficient for The Witcher to run for me. All of those environment variables probably won't be necessary. I leave it to you to test which aren't.

Of course, all of these might be completely unnecessary. Looking at Steam's command-line options, we have:

-applaunch <appID> [launch parameters]  Launches an Game or Application through Steam.

And when I ran:

steam -applaunch 20900 foo bar

the Wine command was:

"$PROTON/dist/bin/wine" "Z:\$STEAM\steamapps\common\The Witcher Enhanced Edition\System\witcher.exe" foo bar

So Steam did pass on foo and bar as arguments to the game. This might be all you need.