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Steam frequently thrashing hard drive. Seperately Vulkan shader processing every time I launch Warframe.
Maath Mar 29, 2021
I have a couple of issues. First is the fact that Steam frequently thrashes the hard drive for a long time (at least a half hour, maybe a full hour or more). I haven't found much online regarding this issue. I did see some mention of the music library. I turned off automatic indexing, and removed all directories from there and cleared the music database, but still this occurs.

Secondly, I find that pretty much every time I start Warframe, it is processing the Vulkan shaders. I thought the whole point was to do this once, save them, then start up faster the next time. I even see it downloading precompiled Vulkan shaders for Warframe some times when I start Steam, and yet when I start Warframe, it still processes the shaders.

From starting Steam to getting fully into Warframe generally takes 30-40 minutes, every time. I don't think it should take so long.

Thanks for any help you may provide.

Last edited by Maath on 29 March 2021 at 6:47 pm UTC
Maath Mar 29, 2021
I think the Steam thrashing is related to Warframe. When I exit the game, even if I just logged in, did nothing and exited, this thrashing occurs. iotop shows this as the culprit:

steam [CJobMgr::m_Work]

I'm going to try some other games and see if when I exit them they cause the same behavior.

Last edited by Maath on 29 March 2021 at 1:38 pm UTC
Maath Mar 29, 2021
I have tried Tomb Raider (the reboot version), which I think runs native, and did not see that process after quitting. Then I tried Shadow of Mordor, and I did see it, but just for about ten seconds. Finally, I tried Path of Exile, and also did not see it.

So, I guess it is a Warframe issue.
Sigbjorn Mar 30, 2021
(I'm guessing by thrashing you mean Steam getting the hard drive busy. English is not my first language, sorry if I misunderstood.)

I got the same thing (the thrashing, not the shader processing part) with Torchlight 2, which is a native game. I played it recently with friends and maybe every other time when exiting the game the Steam client would get the hard drive busy for maybe 5 minutes. Even if I closed the client, the process would remain open until done. I tried a quick search on the internet but couldn't find anything. I guessed it meant the Steam client was checking the game files, because what else could it be doing for that long? But that's just a guess. I'm not exactly an expert, so not sure where to look for clues. ^^'

Hope it helps. :)

Last edited by Sigbjorn on 30 March 2021 at 8:40 am UTC
StalePopcorn May 21, 2021
I'm getting this after playing Battlefield 1 for awhile. That process runs for quite awhile topping out my storage I/O. The only way I can gt out of it is, after quitting Steam, launching KSysGuard (KDE), searching 'Steam' and killing it. I'm waiting to hear back from Steam Support—their initial response is something like "Did you check out the Steam Linux client troubleshooting resources first?" Man, I've been trying for days, Linux isn't really for knuckleheads. I'm only part knucklehead.
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