Steam crash dumper corrupting files during OOM conditions

[TheBeardOfTruth]

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1773426488 Fri, Mar 13, 2026 02:52 UTC -08:00
• Distribution: Arch Linux 6.19.6-zen1-1-zen
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
• Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz
• GPU: AMD Radeon Rx 7900 XTX

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Hopefully this is a weird freak issue, a one in a trillion occurrence, but mayhaps not.

I accidentally OOM'd my system when debugging another program that was misbehaving, this crashed steam. This is reasonable and expected -- steam is sensitive to OOM conditions and seems to proactively crash faster than anything else (e.g firefox).

The problem is that the crash dump processes spawned ended up doing less than good things to steam's files:
It took me about 20 minutes to find the rogue process since I was waiting for a btrfs scrub to finish finding the files, it found some corrupted files (~/.local/share/Steam/linux32/steamclient.so as well as the equivalent in linux64). I deleted these in the hope that that would stop the dmesg spam. It did not. So I ran another scrub and while waiting I was looking at the process list (ps aux | grep steam) and found steam's crashdump process still running.

Killing that stopped the ceaseless btrfs errors, indicating this process was malfunctioning such that it was corrupting files (probably due to trying to write crashdump). Sadly this did not happen before it corrupted additional files, see journal (dmesg) exerpts below (the error counts are incoherent due to btrfs dev stats -z /dev/sdb2 ):

[  +0.000142] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394412544 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476542976 root 5 inode 107088839 offset 15728640 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/linux64/steamclient.so)
[  +0.000161] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394674688 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476805120 root 5 inode 107088839 offset 42598400 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/linux64/steamclient.so)
[  +0.000140] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394281472 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476411904 root 5 inode 107088832 offset 3145728 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/linux32/steamclient.so)

[  +0.000142] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394412544 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476542976 root 5 inode 107088839 offset 15728640 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/linux64/steamclient.so)
[  +0.000161] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394674688 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476805120 root 5 inode 107088839 offset 42598400 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/linux64/steamclient.so)
[  +0.000140] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394281472 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476411904 root 5 inode 107088832 offset 3145728 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/linux32/steamclient.so)

...

[  +0.000050] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476870656 root 5 inode 107654369 offset 1003520 length 4096 links 1 (path: var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.steamwebhelper.1000.d4762a1ddb2147968d7d4bf6d6f56186.652968.1775827169000000.zst)
[  +0.000006] BTRFS error (device sdb2): scrub: unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2 physical 116476870656
[  +0.000028] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476870656 root 5 inode 107654369 offset 1003520 length 4096 links 1 (path: var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.steamwebhelper.1000.d4762a1ddb2147968d7d4bf6d6f56186.652968.1775827169000000.zst)
[  +0.000006] BTRFS error (device sdb2): scrub: unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2 physical 116476870656
[  +0.000026] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476870656 root 5 inode 107654369 offset 1003520 length 4096 links 1 (path: var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.steamwebhelper.1000.d4762a1ddb2147968d7d4bf6d6f56186.652968.1775827169000000.zst)
[  +0.000004] BTRFS error (device sdb2): scrub: unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2 physical 116476870656
[  +0.000005] BTRFS error (device sdb2): scrub: unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 115394936832 on dev /dev/sdb2 physical 116477067264
[  +0.000017] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476870656 root 5 inode 107654369 offset 1003520 length 4096 links 1 (path: var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.steamwebhelper.1000.d4762a1ddb2147968d7d4bf6d6f56186.652968.1775827169000000.zst)
[  +0.000003] BTRFS error (device sdb2): scrub: unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2 physical 116476870656
[  +0.000022] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394740224 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476870656 root 5 inode 107654369 offset 1003520 length 4096 links 1 (path: var/lib/systemd/coredump/core.steamwebhelper.1000.d4762a1ddb2147968d7d4bf6d6f56186.652968.1775827169000000.zst)
[  +0.000116] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394871296 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477001728 root 5 inode 107108425 offset 7077888 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/0/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000002] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394805760 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476936192 root 5 inode 107108425 offset 6946816 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/0/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000000] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115395198976 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477329408 root 5 inode 107108425 offset 10747904 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/0/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000002] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394936832 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477067264 root 5 inode 107108425 offset 9043968 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/0/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000034] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115395198976 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477329408 root 5 inode 107088867 offset 10747904 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/legacycompat/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000001] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394871296 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477001728 root 5 inode 107088867 offset 7077888 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/legacycompat/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000001] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394936832 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477067264 root 5 inode 107088867 offset 9043968 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/legacycompat/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000000] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394805760 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116476936192 root 5 inode 107088867 offset 6946816 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/legacycompat/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000003] BTRFS error (device sdb2): scrub: unable to fixup (regular) error at logical 115395198976 on dev /dev/sdb2 physical 116477329408
[  +0.000035] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394871296 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477001728 root 5 inode 107108425 offset 7077888 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/0/pfx/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamclient.dll)
[  +0.000022] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): scrub: checksum error at logical 115394871296 on dev /dev/sdb2, physical 116477001728 root 5 inode 107088867 offset 7077888 length 4096 links 1 (path: home/username/.local/share/Steam/legacycompat/steamclient.dll)
[  +9.026196] btrfs_print_data_csum_error: 44 callbacks suppressed
[  +0.000003] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): csum failed root 5 ino 107088879 off 109486080 csum 0x8941f998 expected csum 0x7f33e685 mirror 1
[  +0.000006] btrfs_dev_stat_inc_and_print: 1088 callbacks suppressed
[  +0.000001] BTRFS error (device sdb2): bdev /dev/sdb2 errs: wr 0, rd 0, flush 0, corrupt 2395, gen 0
[  +0.000004] BTRFS warning (device sdb2): csum failed root 5 ino 107088879 off 109490176 csum 0x8941f998 expected csum 0x253318e6 mirror 1

The corrupt files were identified by btrfs scrub.

The drive has been thoroughly tested with read/write stress tests after and smartctl extended test, no indication of hardware issue (old age wear indicators, overheating) is present.

Expected behaviour:
crash gracefully without corrupting its own files.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

Honestly not sure how to reliably reproduce this, I don't really want to for obvious reasons.

1. run steam on a system with btrfs partition(s).
2. OOM the system
3. let the OOM reaper do its thing or invoke it with sysrq+f