Trying to wrap game launch - Steam Linux

Question

Similar to this question, I'm trying to run a script to wrap the launch of a game simply for purposes of tracking how long I've been playing.

The way I have it set up currently is:

1. Move the original executable to a new filename, and make a bash script to replace it (making sure to mark it executable)
2. curl out a URL to notify a server (that's keeping timestamps, etc.) that I've started
3. Launch the actual game (using $@ to make sure any options are sent in as well)
4. curl out a URL to notify a server that I'm done

I didn't think this would pose issues, but for whatever reason when actually running through Steam the curl command exits with status code 48 and game begins as if nothing happened. If I just run the script by hand, curl runs successfully but the game notifies me that it can't connect to Steam.

Is there a way to actually wrap commands instead of just polling to determine if the game has launched? Thank you!

Answer 1

After much research, it turns out that Steam adds its own libraries to the $LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable, which is causing issues with the curl command finding the proper libcurl.

To fix this, record what your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable is when not running through Steam, and change it for the commands in the script with something like:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" <my_command>