Hi all, I've written before on here about how incredible this container is so massive thanks to the developer.

 

Just wanted some perspective from the community: most of my Steam games work perfectly, but others that have a 'Platinum' rating on ProtonDB and I've personally run fine on Linux (Bazzite) on bare metal don't work on Steam-Headless. None of the 'tweaks' on ProtonDB seem to have the slightest effect either. Snowrunner is my personal nemesis in this respect.

 

Is this just the nature of running 0.2.0 software, or should I be doing more to debug? I've seen some comments above about Unraid 7.1 helping with DRM software, so if the advice is to try updating the host then more than happy to go with that.

 

Thanks,

Anybody know if/how I can get Zwift installed in this container? I've tried installing it via the installer, and copying over the installed folder from a windows PC, neither worked.

 

https://www.zwift.com/

Edited May 2, 20251 yr by epilot5280

Hey guys,

i'm also struggling with Lutris in this container. My games are mounted on /mnt/games

I have write permission in explorer and bash, but when i try to let lutris create stuff in this directory, the path changes to

Quote

/tmp/.X11-unix/run/doc/1bbe6c2a/Lutris

it doesnt matter, if lutris is installed as user or system - same behavior.

any ideas or hints?

Kind Regards!

On 5/16/2024 at 11:10 AM, nknr said:

+1 on how to install EmuDeck and updating Sunshine

Description mentions "one click install for things like EmuDeck" but I can't seem to find how

Hi All. I've been looking around but can't find any clarity here. Is there any documentation to support the 1-click install for Emudeck?

 

I'm looking to set up emulation to stream to my shield, i'm wondering if this is the right solution for that or not.

On 4/22/2025 at 8:26 AM, Fozzuk said:

Hi all, I've written before on here about how incredible this container is so massive thanks to the developer.

 

Just wanted some perspective from the community: most of my Steam games work perfectly, but others that have a 'Platinum' rating on ProtonDB and I've personally run fine on Linux (Bazzite) on bare metal don't work on Steam-Headless. None of the 'tweaks' on ProtonDB seem to have the slightest effect either. Snowrunner is my personal nemesis in this respect.

 

Is this just the nature of running 0.2.0 software, or should I be doing more to debug? I've seen some comments above about Unraid 7.1 helping with DRM software, so if the advice is to try updating the host then more than happy to go with that.

 

Thanks,

I'm in the same boat. Yakuza Like a Dragon and God of War Ragnarok both work in my Linux VM, but don't work in this. If you ever figure out why some don't work, drop a post here

On 5/16/2025 at 5:07 PM, mmwilson0 said:

Hi All. I've been looking around but can't find any clarity here. Is there any documentation to support the 1-click install for Emudeck?

 

I'm looking to set up emulation to stream to my shield, i'm wondering if this is the right solution for that or not.

So, i've got it working, but the performance is really sluggish. I thought it was just that way because of VNC, but when i try and use sunshine or steam link, the behavior is the same. I'm running a Intel® Core™ i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz, 32GB ram, and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. Resource utilization when trying a NES game was pretty modest, but still -- sluggish. Is there a way to boost performance of this container, or am i somehow facing restraints due to my  hardware?

EmuDeck can be installed by opening a terminal and entering:

sh -c 'curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dragoonDorise/EmuDeck/main/install.sh | bash'

 

1. When prompted to enter your password, just click enter (there is no password).
2. When asked about the location, select a custom directory of your choosing.
3. When asked about the OS or device, select Linux.
4. Wait for ages as it just takes forever to install - especially on the array.

 

I have removed the "one click" installation for things like Lutris and EmuDeck. I did not realise that was still in the docs. 

We have been maintaining our own set of init scripts for Steam Headless in the Discord chats which has automated setups for things like Retroarch and ESDE along with a bunch of other things. These init scripts are auto run during the container startup to ensure you emulators are up-to-date with the confing in github here: https://github.com/Steam-Headless/init.d . I personally would recommend using these init.d scripts and helping out on GitHub to build on them or maintain them over using EmuDeck if you are up for it.

8 hours ago, Josh.5 said:

EmuDeck can be installed by opening a terminal and entering:

sh -c 'curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dragoonDorise/EmuDeck/main/install.sh | bash'

 

1. When prompted to enter your password, just click enter (there is no password).
2. When asked about the location, select a custom directory of your choosing.
3. When asked about the OS or device, select Linux.
4. Wait for ages as it just takes forever to install - especially on the array.

 

I have removed the "one click" installation for things like Lutris and EmuDeck. I did not realise that was still in the docs. 

We have been maintaining our own set of init scripts for Steam Headless in the Discord chats which has automated setups for things like Retroarch and ESDE along with a bunch of other things. These init scripts are auto run during the container startup to ensure you emulators are up-to-date with the confing in github here: https://github.com/Steam-Headless/init.d . I personally would recommend using these init.d scripts and helping out on GitHub to build on them or maintain them over using EmuDeck if you are up for it.

Thanks @Josh.5! That's how i was installing (well, i was using the "download" from emudeck, which is basically just a script with that as its content".

 

For password, i thought i had to use the password that i configured in the Unraid Docker settings. Everything emudeck related seems to work, but i did notice a few "permission denied" errors when the install script was running.

 

I did have 2 other questions, one was about performance. Right now I have video output as VNC, and when i drop in through the web browser, performance is quite sluggish. Similarly when I try and use Moonlight or Steam link with the server and client on the same network, the performance isn't great. My system specs are Intel® Core™ i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz, 32GB ram, and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 that I'm passing through to the container. I set the appdata location to the cache (in part, to resolve the steam crashing errors), though my roms are in a share on my array. I think that the hardware should be adequate, but even when testing NES roms, things seemed sluggish and laggy.

 

The other question was on configuring a controller for steam headless. Is the recommended path still to use Uinput? I searched the CA store, but it is not showing up for me.

 

Thanks!

Malc

Can't answer the emudeck questions, but as far as a controller goes, I've been using a tablet and a Steam Deck with a PS4 controller and haven't had to configure anything extra when using via Sunshine/Moonlight.  Just my .02.

Hey guys,

just another "performance issue" question. I managed to install the steam headless container, managed to make it use of my Nvidia GPU by --runtime='nvidia' etc., I was able to install for e.g. Counter Strike 2. Problem is, that the game is almost unplayable bcs of ~8-10 fps! My hardware is a Ryzen 7 8700, MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16G Ventus 2X OC Plus, 64GB DDR5 RAM, Asrock 850i; in other containers (Handbrake, AV1-NVENC around 600-700 fps, ebook2audiobook via GPU in around 4x real time "encoding" etc) the GPU works like a charm, and I can approve the steam headless is using the GPU via "GPU statistics"/nvidia-smi, so I guess it's something about steam/sunshine/moonlight configs which is causing the 90ies like slaggish gameplay!? Network? --> same issues with 1Gbit LAN cable... Please tell me which configs you need to know/I have to post and maybe to change according to your recommendations? Any help is very much appreciated, thank you in advnace!

Chris

Edit: yeah, all containers which might use the GPU are stopped. Unraid: Nvidia open source driver v570.144

Edited June 13, 20251 yr by anticholium

Hi,

Trying to get this up and running but it des not seem to recognise my GPU and games will not launch. Any way to force a driver?

Is the uinput Plugin in the opening post still necessary to add controller support? Since it's no longer available in the Unraid Store..

I can use my Microsoft XBox Controller without issues in Steam-Headless, but as soon as i start anything other, it's not useable. When i start Moonlight, i can normally choose what i want to start with my controller, but after that is started, it isn't recognized anymore.

On 6/16/2025 at 9:24 AM, Etherealthe1st said:

Hi,

Trying to get this up and running but it des not seem to recognise my GPU and games will not launch. Any way to force a driver?

Do you have your GPU working in any other dockers? You will need to do the standard other items to get your card working in other docker containers to make it work w/ this one (Install Radeon-Top, NVIDIA plugin, or Intel GPU TOP and pass through the card to the container)

On 6/25/2025 at 9:01 PM, chesh said:

Do you have your GPU working in any other dockers? You will need to do the standard other items to get your card working in other docker containers to make it work w/ this one (Install Radeon-Top, NVIDIA plugin, or Intel GPU TOP and pass through the card to the container)

Thanks for the reply, I do have Radeon-Top installed. the docker documentation was a bit vague as to whether the GPU needed to be passed through to the VM. I did try it though and unfortunately it still does not work. The GPU works fine with other containers. I see there is a new unraid bugfix release, will try upgrading. I also have an old Intel processor with integrated graphics which I'll try the docker on as well.

1 hour ago, Etherealthe1st said:

Thanks for the reply, I do have Radeon-Top installed. the docker documentation was a bit vague as to whether the GPU needed to be passed through to the VM. I did try it though and unfortunately it still does not work. The GPU works fine with other containers. I see there is a new unraid bugfix release, will try upgrading. I also have an old Intel processor with integrated graphics which I'll try the docker on as well.

Definitely a driver issue works fine on the Intel iGPU. Hopefully the docker is updated to include the latest drivers.

On 6/29/2025 at 7:00 PM, Etherealthe1st said:

Definitely a driver issue works fine on the Intel iGPU. Hopefully the docker is updated to include the latest drivers.

After some trial and error, I got it working :-). Originally I passed through the GPU after installing the container. I removed and re-added the container and made sure the GPU was passed through before running it for the first time. Looks like that did the trick.

First of all thanks for this container, works brilliantly.

If I have my mouse and keyboard plugged into the motherboard it works flawlessly.

However if i have them plugged into a usb hub I get not mouse or keyboard input in the container.

I want it to work with a usb hub as the server will be in a different room and rather than having many cables coming out of the wall I can just have one.

Hoping for some direction on this as i have scoured the internet in hopes to figure it out. Still have not

Thanks in advance.

Edited July 7, 20251 yr by BigMic

4 hours ago, BigMic said:

First of all thanks for this container, works brilliantly.

If I have my mouse and keyboard plugged into the motherboard it works flawlessly.

However if i have them plugged into a usb hub I get not mouse or keyboard input in the container.

I want it to work with a usb hub as the server will be in a different room and rather than having many cables coming out of the wall I can just have one.

Hoping for some direction on this as i have scoured the internet in hopes to figure it out. Still have not

Thanks in advance.

Do the mouse and keyboard work outside of the container through the hub?

Thanks chesh,

It works passed through a vm. I can also log into unraid through the command line using the keyboard with the hub.

Ive tried to pass through /dev/bus/usb/001 and the corosponding numbers associated with the keyboard and mouse as well as the hub. Ive tried hidraw 1 to 7 passed through at the same time as those numbers were the hub (I had to turn off privileged for the container not to fail).

Ill upload system devices when its plugged in vs not plugged in later when i get the chance to.

Hi all what a great docker!

I have a question though - Is it possible to enable RDP connection to this docker?

Mine is configured as

Network type: Host

and when I install xrdp it seem that I cannot connect to this docker.

Shall I Configure some port? I tried adding

But it did not change anything

Thanks for reply :)

UPDATE:

I figure it out. Somehow xrdp service is not properly run after lunching docker so:

sudo service xrdp stop

sudo service xrdp start

properly relunch xrdp service and its possible to use again

Edited July 15, 2025Jul 15 by copper
fixed

Does anyone know if it's possible to add more resolutions to the desktop/simulated HDMI output? Currently we got a lot of 16:9, 16:10, 4:3 resolutions etc. but I would require like one or two 21:9 resolutions but don't know how to add them if at all possible.

Edit:

Nvm, this did the trick:

xrandr --newmode "2560x1080" 185.58 2560 2624 2688 2784 1080 1083 1093 1111 -hsync -vsync
xrandr --addmode HDMI-0 "2560x1080"
xrandr --output HDMI-0 --mode "2560x1080"

Edited July 14, 2025Jul 14 by MellowB
Answered my own question

I'm using Steam headless just for local network transfers, but currently the maximum speed is only 1 Gbps, even though my entire system is 2.5 Gbps. Could you please tell me if there's a solution? Thank you.

Anyone got a solution for gnome software not loading completely? Thanks!

I'm trying to get this to work. I can connect to the WebUI but when I click the connect button I get "Failed to Connect to server" message.

I've looked through the thread but a lot of the solutions are years old, even the extra step of installing uinput on the project page is outdated.

I've installed the app through Unraid, gave it a game library which it has installed it's files to so there's not a permission issue there.

I have GPU passthough set up with the variable populated with my GPUID, --runtime=nvidia at the beginning in extra parameters.

Is there additional steps I need to take to make this work outside of the instructions on the project page?

I'm wondering about the password piece and possibly the timezone. I've tried to change the timezone to my own and I've tried leaving it default. I've also tried to put my own password in there, and I've kept the default, but I always get the same result.

12 minutes ago, Squirreljester said:

I'm trying to get this to work. I can connect to the WebUI but when I click the connect button I get "Failed to Connect to server" message.

I've looked through the thread but a lot of the solutions are years old, even the extra step of installing uinput on the project page is outdated.

I've installed the app through Unraid, gave it a game library which it has installed it's files to so there's not a permission issue there.

I have GPU passthough set up with the variable populated with my GPUID, --runtime=nvidia at the beginning in extra parameters.

Is there additional steps I need to take to make this work outside of the instructions on the project page?

I'm wondering about the password piece and possibly the timezone. I've tried to change the timezone to my own and I've tried leaving it default. I've also tried to put my own password in there, and I've kept the default, but I always get the same result.

I removed the container, removed the folder, re-installed, and didn't touch anything, left everything defaults, and now it appears to be working.

This means some setting I changed broke it, but I'm not sure what did it.

Does the password variable in the config need to be default or should I change that to something specific to the container?