Openai/6902d36d-2c2c-800f-9d1a-6c5943a498bf

This conversation was exported from ChatGPT

gpt-5-thinking

User: My game native linux build made by Unity is "not responding" for one player.

My game (native linux build made by Unity) is "not responding" for one player. This is his system monitor whe the game gets stuck indefinitely on launch. Your analysis? This happens regardless of whether the game is being run through proton, and regardless of what proton version is being used. The issue has almost never been experienced by other linux users - Some have had rare occasions where the "not responding" prompt shows up on the game's launch, but the prompt usually goes away within seconds.

Assistant: What I see in that screenshot:

What I see in that screenshot:

1. RAM is tight: - Physical RAM: 8.2 GB - In use at the moment of the screenshot: ~3.0 GB (36%) → that’s fine by itself. - But look at swap: 1.4 GB of 2.1 GB swap is already used (~70%). On an 8 GB machine, having 1.4 GB already swapped out before or right as your game finishes launching is a red flag.
2. Swap is small and almost full: - Only 2.1 GB swap on an 8 GB system is modest for gaming. - If Unity tries to grab a couple more GBs during startup (very common: initial scene load, textures, IL2CPP, shader warmup, FMOD/WWise banks, addressables), the kernel has to decide what to evict → the system can stall hard.
3. CPU is not the bottleneck: - All 8 logical CPUs are just doing little bumps (5–12%, one spike during launch) — that’s what it looks like when the process is blocked/waiting (I/O, paging, some lock) rather than actively crunching. - If it were a tight loop / runaway thread, you’d see 1 core pegged to 100%. You don’t.
4. There was a spike right before 30 seconds, then RAM dropped: - In the Memory graph, RAM climbs, then around 30 s it suddenly drops and swap is already high. That’s very “I loaded something big → kernel shuffled things → userland app looks hung” behavior.
5. Network is irrelevant here: tiny blip, so it’s not “waiting for the internet.”

So, what does that tell us?

- Your game’s Linux build is hitting a heavy allocation / load phase right at startup (Unity does this a lot: loading first scene, assets, audio, shader variants, DOTS packages, etc.).

• On this player’s machine, the OS is already under some memory pressure (Discord, maybe browser, maybe compositor, maybe Steam + Proton runtime), and they have only 2 GB of swap.
• When Unity asks for a big chunk, the kernel starts swapping/paging. If their swap is on a slow disk (HDD, or even a busy SSD), the app will look “Not Responding” indefinitely — especially if Unity’s main thread is blocked on that load and the window doesn’t repaint.
• Other Linux users don’t see it (or only briefly) because: - they have more RAM (16 GB+), - or more/better swap, - or faster disk, - or fewer background apps. - so the exact same “Unity does a big gulp at startup” is short for them but pathological for this player.

This also explains why:

Because the trigger is not in Proton, it’s the host’s memory pressure + Unity startup pattern. Proton or native — if the kernel is thrashing, both will “not respond.”

1. Close everything else (browser tabs, Discord overlay, anything Electron-y, Steam friends window, screen recorders) → try again. If it suddenly works, it was memory pressure.

1. Increase swap: - If they’re on Mint/Ubuntu: create a 4–8 GB swapfile instead of just 2 GB. On an 8 GB RAM machine used for gaming, I’d do at least 4 GB, honestly 6–8 GB is safer. - Also check swappiness (60 default) — but just having more swap is the first fix.
2. Run the game from a terminal and watch logs in real time: ``bash ./YourGame.x86_64 -logFile ./player.log tail -f ./player.log ` If it stalls right after “Loading” / “GfxDevice” / “FMOD” / “Preloaded assets” → we know where.
3. Move swap / ensure swap is on a fast disk (if they happen to have swap on a slow HDD/USB, it will look exactly like “it froze forever”).
4. Temporarily disable overlays/recorders/Steam overlay — they eat VRAM/system RAM.
5. Try launching with lighter GFX backend (depends on how you built, but for Unity Linux builds): `bash ./YourGame.x86_64 -force-vulkan # or ./YourGame.x86_64 -force-glcore `` Sometimes the freeze is at gfx init, but the symptoms + swap here still shout “memory.”

Even though this is strongly host-specific, you can make it more forgiving:

1. Check your initial scene’s memory footprint. If you’re loading a lot of large textures/audio/all Addressables at once, see if you can lazy-load or split the first load.
2. Player.log from this user is gold. Ask them to send: - ~/.config/unity3d/<YourCompany>/<YourGame>/Player.log (native) - or the Proton prefix log (Steam → right click → browse local files → …), depending on how they launched. If the log stops at a very particular subsystem, we can narrow it more.
3. Build with a simple “diagnostic” scene as first scene (just a small UI + text + a coroutine that loads the real game) — if that scene launches fine on their machine, it confirms it’s big-first-load + low-RAM.
4. Check for big audio banks — FMOD/WWise style banks can be big; loading them all at once hurts 8 GB Linux boxes.

:

That matches the screenshot. If, after more swap and fewer apps, it still hangs, then we look at driver/GPU-init or a specific Unity subsystem — but right now, the simplest reading is: startup load + low RAM + nearly-full swap → apparent infinite hang.

gpt-5

User: Could you provide further insctructions on how to increase swap

Could you provide further insctructions on how to increase swap

Assistant: Here’s a clear, safe way for your player or you to increase swap space on Linux Mint / Ubuntu — works identically on mo…

Here’s a clear, safe way for your player (or you) to increase swap space on Linux Mint / Ubuntu — works identically on most Debian-based distros:

🧠 Summary

We’ll:

1. Check current swap.
2. Turn off the old small one (optional).
3. Create a new, larger swap file (e.g. 8 GB).
4. Enable it.
5. Make it permanent.

🧩 Step-by-step

1️⃣ Check existing swap

Open a terminal and run:

swapon --show
free -h

You’ll see something like:

NAME      TYPE  SIZE USED PRIO
/swapfile file  2G   1.4G  -2

2️⃣ (Optional) Turn off the old one

If you want to replace it instead of adding another, disable it:

sudo swapoff -a

3️⃣ Create a new swap file

Let’s make an 8 GB one. You can adjust the 8G part.

sudo fallocate -l 8G /swapfile

If your system says fallocate not supported (rare), use:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=8192

4️⃣ Secure it

Linux needs it to be readable only by root:

sudo chmod 600 /swapfile

5️⃣ Make it a swap area

sudo mkswap /swapfile

6️⃣ Turn it on

sudo swapon /swapfile

Check:

swapon --show
free -h

You should now see 8 GB swap.

7️⃣ Make it permanent

Edit /etc/fstab:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add this line at the end:

/swapfile none swap sw 0 0

Save (Ctrl + O, Enter) and exit (Ctrl + X).

8️⃣ (Optional) Adjust how aggressively swap is used

Default Linux Mint / Ubuntu swappiness = 60. You can make it use RAM more before touching swap (helps performance).

Run:

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To temporarily lower to 10:

sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

To make that permanent:

echo 'vm.swappiness=10' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

✅ Verify

Reboot, then check:

free -h

You should now see ~8 GB swap and your system will be far more stable when Unity games start loading.

Would you like me to tailor these instructions specifically for the player’s distro (e.g., Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon, Ubuntu 24.04, Pop!_OS, etc.) so I can include their exact commands and GUI method as well?