Problems with Steam on Win 10 & Linux VM (with SteamLibrary on Share)

[asah]

Hi everyone,

 

I am pretty new to unraid (~2 Weeks running the server) but so far anything worked really well, until I tried using Steam on Linux and/or Windows. But first my system:

 

CPU: Threadripper 2950X

RAM: 64 GB

Cache: 2x Crucial MX 500 1TB (btrfs)

Array: 1x 4 TB WD Blue

Parrity: 1x 4 TB WD Blue

NVME: 1x Samsung Evo 970 500GB (unassigned device for VM disks)

LAN: 1x 1GB LAN (I currently only use one of my 2 Ports)

GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2080

Internet: 500 MB/s down and 50 MB/s up

 

I created some shares (private for each user in the house, public share, media share, games share - steam lib. steam share - steam lib-Linux 4 testing) and the access rates are generally good, especially from within a Linux or Windows VM. I can drop a 3 GB iso image to the share (cache) and it takes around 1-2 secs, great.

 

Also the passthrough of my NVIDIA RTX 2080 works without any issues on both, windows and linux. Game performance on both systems is great (even I didn´t do any benchmarks)

 

But now I figured out some wired issues with steam on both, Linux and WIndows 10. When I download games on linux (to the share set as default library) some games download with 20-30 Mb/s on average (which is not perfect as I got around 60-70 MB/s on barebone windows 10, but hey, maybe it´s steam or anything like that). But other games (like Pathfinder Kingmaker with 30 GB download, or Crusader Kings II with only 1.3 GB) download at first with 20-50 MB/s and than drop to 0 - 500k. I googled for special steam issues with linux and dropped ipV6 and also I am using dnsmasq now. With this the dl-speed is around 2-5MB/s most of the time. Sometimes it still drops to 0 for ages and sometimes it skyrockets (haha) to 20 MB/s but most of the time it´s pretty bad for the connection I got.

 

So I thought I try out a few different distros (PopOS!, Manjaro, Fedora) but it´s always the same ...

 

Ok, then I thought I try it with windows, because I thought that this might be related to (my config of) unraid or linux in general and I wanted to have confirmation.

 

With windows the DL-Speeds of Pathfinder were way better (between 20-70 MB/s as it should be) and I were pretty sure it´s some sort of linux issue but then, when the DL finished steam told me that it will take 4 Days to install Pathfinder (what??????). Ok, this might be some wired calculation issue so I didn´t really care (remember, it´s 30GB to download). After 3 hours I went back to the pc as I got family stuff to do and I were a bit shocked: Still more than 24 hours until its installed. This was the moment I were pretty sure there might be some issue with my unraid configuration.

 

When I did some more testing I figured out that always when the download or installation is really slowly, my RAM is 100% utilized (16 GB VM and the rest "Cache"), my disks don´t do anything and my network neither.

 

After cancelling the Pathfinder installation on Windows as I wanted to test it again so I could give you guys screenshots of Steam vs Unraid Stats I figured out that the preallocation for Pathfinder now takes ages (running since an hour now and is 3/4 finished).

 

For sure something is wrong here. But the strange thing is, that "normal" access to shares is pretty quick and especially within a VM I can easily drop 2-3 GB isos to a share without even recognizing it´s a share ... (1-2 Seconds). Only steam got these issues.

 

I am completly out of ideas (I fight this problem since days) so I thought before I give up on unraid, it´s time to ask you guys

 

My Unraid Disk-Layout:

 

 

Games (Steam Library) Share Config:

 

Stats while Steam is validating my Pathfinder download:

 

2) getting bad

 

3) a bit better again

 

4) watch the scale now, dropped drasticly

 

4) nearly 0 I/O

 

5) little peaks of less than 1 MB

 

 

The same is sadly true when downloading. In the beginning huge I/O peaks and then nearly nothing at all. I would be so glad if anyone had some ideas what could cause this issue. It´s clearly steam related, but it might be some config issues on my side.

 

So any help would be appriciated. If you require additional infos, please let me know.

 

Thanks,

 

asah

 

 

Edit:

Start of preallocating is fast again but then same issues as before...

 

Ok, now Pathfinder installation finished after 1 hour and 7 minutes, still extremely slow.

 

 

Now I get even more confused. Other games I tried (on Windows and Linux) download and install in the same speed as you would expect them to download/install on baremetal. So it seems this issue is not related to steam in general, only some games (Pathfinder and Crusader Kings II so far). Other games behave as you would expect (Cities Skylines, Stellaris, Foundation, Path of Exile <- tried this because it´s nearly as big as Pathfinder)

 

Path of Exile (with ~25GB download) downloaded and installed in about 7 minutes on windows. I will try that now under Linux as well

 

Update:

 

I tried Path of Exile on Manjaro, too. The download was at max at 15 MB/s (compared to 60-70 MB/s on windows) but in the end it downloaded and in the end it installed within a second. So it seems my downloadspeed within linux is far worse than under windows (steam only), but the installation and stuff behaves as strange as on a windows VM (some work as you would expect, some take ages)

 

It´s really strange ....

Edited April 5, 2020 by asah

[cgrd]

Hi. Some linux users have indicated the issue may lie with how Steam handles IPv6 on the linux platform. Disabling IPv6 has resulted in faster download speeds.

 

You can read about it here:  https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/b0jh6g/steam_download_speed_slow/

 

All the best!