Steam Incident leaves No One Steaming

This morning I set out installing SteamOS on my desktop computer 1. That turned out instructive and satisfying, though not in the way first intended.

My desktop is a dualboot system running Windows and Linux on separate SSDs, with an extra hard drives for storage, and while I use Windows as my daily driver (even using virtualization t´when I need Linux for work or education purposes), there are enough situations where being able to boot into another operating system is useful. Linux Mint is my distribution of choice and since I had v17 installed and wanted to upgrade to version 18 anyway it was not a big issue to use replace it with another distribution as experiment.

So I went ahead – downloaded the SteamOS installer and loaded it unto a USB stick and then shutdown the PC to do what one should always do when installing a new OS: Disconnect all hard disks except the installation target. After this basic precaution it was all a matter of opening the bootmenu, select USB and follow the instructions inside the installer. Straightforward, though a bit quirky compared to the installers of distributions like Mint or Fedora, but SteamOS is in beta and probably also more intended for products like Valve’s own Steambox than DIY projects like mine. Still, I made it through and up with one running Steam machine.

That’s where trouble started, because I couldn’t get SteamOS to place nice with my usual dual-boot setup (otherwise easily managed with EasyBCD). However, since SteamOS installs it self in EFI mode, it wouldn’t play nice and frustrating troubleshooting followed. it was also time for breakfast and for me to close the box, and let it be reminder to not do things on an empty stomach that at this time I tried a fresh installation of SteamOS with all drives connected. I carefully selected the right drive for installation and once more SteamOs installed. However, gone was my Windows installation too. Initially I suspected a corrupted bootloader and tried out the repair utilities on my Windows installation disk, but to no prevail and the disk appeared to be dead (it has happened to an SSD of mine before, so OK, stuff happens). My last troubleshooting step was to boot into Linux from a live DVD and that’s when I saw it and understood. Regardless how careful I was when I selected which disk to install on, the SteamOS installer had still applied the same partition scheme to my Windows disk as on my Linux disk, but without installing. Thankfully not to my data disks though, although given that I have a double cloud backup of my data, the worst thing would have been waiting for data to be downloaded and restored.

Reinstalling Windows then took only a couple of hours until I was up and running with most of my standard software (how online installation files and fast internet changes things! )

Looking back, on the one hand side I feel a bit silly for not taking the basic precaution of disconnecting all hard drives before installing a new OS; however, I am almost cheerful (perhaps even smug) to see how having proper backup would leave me safe in a not-quite worst case scenario, and how my basic rules of keeping OS and data on separate disks kept me safe (I have broken that rule once in 23 years, which is also the number of times a system disk has failed – coincidence? Murphy says “no”)

I probably got rid of a few unnecessary applications at the same time,got my start menu sorted and upgraded to Mint 18 as planned anyway, so no issue there. I also got to know EFI and I understand why some communities are concerned about it.

Finally, my wife always tells me that reinstalling an OS once in a while seems to make me happy. Having written this I believe she is right. Of course she is…

 

  1. SteamOS is a Linux distribution optimized specifically as a platform to run Valve’s Steam gaming platform.