It’s that time of the month for steam, apparently. Semaphores, SteamGetEncryptionKeyToSendToNewClient and other stupidness.
I mean, it happens like once a month, right…? Steam explodes and we have to sit here waiting to start our game server while they piddle-pat around fixing it. Haven’t they heard of a QA process?!
Well anyway, when you run an update, you get something like this error below.
Updating Installation
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 28584 with name 0eBlobRegistryMutex_6B53E6F8EFF3CFA80894AD1DCF60FC87
removing stale semaphore last operated on by process 28584 with name 0eBlobRegistrySignal_6B53E6F8EFF3CFA80894AD1DCF60FC87
Then, when you connect via your game client, you get this:
SteamGetEncryptionKeyToSendToNewClient: Returned NULL!
First, I tried a file system verify which made no difference. Then, I tried deleting .blob files and running an update. That didn’t work either. Finally, I installed the entire server fresh from Valve using the steam binary. That also made no difference.
I’ll update this post with more information when I have it. If you have any ideas, toss them in comments!