Random crashes on Linux (Bazzite, Wayland, NVIDIA) – possible LD_PRELOAD / libextest issue?

HEY

I'm experiencing completely random crashes in Path of Exile on Linux and I'm struggling to identify the root cause.

System:
- OS: Bazzite (Fedora-based, GNOME, Wayland-only)
- Kernel: 6.17.x
- CPU: Ryzen 9 5900X
- GPU: RTX 4070 SUPER (NVIDIA)
- RAM: 32 GB

Problem:
The game crashes unpredictably:
- sometimes right after launch
- sometimes during loading screens
- sometimes after a few minutes or hours or even longer

There is no consistent trigger.

Logs:
I enabled Proton/Wine logging and checked for common errors (err:, dxvk, vulkan, device lost, fatal, etc.), but there is no clear crash message.

The logs mostly show:
- a lot of mscoree (.NET) activity
- unwind / stack traces
- no obvious fatal error

Example excerpt:
trace:mscoree:_CorDllMain (...)
trace:unwind:RtlVirtualUnwind2 (...)

Full log here:
https://gist.github.com/trjdytnjh8-cmyk/48c182ebdda971eb1e488d182e2f48f2

Important finding:
While inspecting running processes, I noticed that Steam/Pressure Vessel is injecting a library via LD_PRELOAD:

--ld-preload=/run/host/usr/lib/extest/libextest.so

This does NOT seem to be standard (not part of vanilla Steam/Proton as far as I know).

My suspicion is that this injected library might be interfering with Proton/Wine or Vulkan and causing silent crashes.

Additional info:
- The game worked fine the day before, but started crashing after a reboot
- Bazzite is Wayland-only, so I cannot test under X11
- Crashes happen regardless of:
- VSync on/off
- monitor setup (mixed vs same refresh rate)
- Behavior is identical when using DirectX 12

At this point I'm suspecting one of the following:
- LD_PRELOAD / injected library issue (libextest.so)
- NVIDIA driver instability on Wayland
- Proton / DXVK regression
- Vulkan-related crash outside of Wine logging

Has anyone seen this behavior or knows what libextest.so is used for in this context?

Any ideas what I should check next would be greatly appreciated.


PS:

I used AI to help format and summarize the logs after several days of unsuccessful debugging. The issue itself and all observations are from my own testing. I even reinstalled my distro from scratch out of frustration, but the problem persists. I also observed the same behavior when using DirectX 12. It does not seem to depend on monitor configuration (mixed vs same refresh rates) or settings like VSync – the crashes still occur randomly regardless.

At this point I feel like I’ve ruled out most obvious causes on my end, so I’d really appreciate any ideas or things I might have overlooked.

EDIT:
No, im not playing Holy Strike
Yes, Texture Quality was set to medium
No, Crashes happen randomly (at least it looks like random)
It can happen while mapping. While doing nothing. While being AFK. While opening a window. While loading a zone"

Hey, i'm facing a similar issue recently. I cant even play the game. It just crashes like every 5 minutes. I have tried everything from my side like updating drivers, reinstalling game, clearing shader cache.

System:
OS: Cachy-os
Kernal: 6,18.x
CPU: Ryzen 7 7735HS
GPU: RTX 4050 Laptop GPU
RAM: 16GB

Honestly, I've been having this problem for DAYS and have tried so many things. Even with AI, I can't make any headway at all.

The game is practically unplayable.
Funny enough, I was able to play without any issues yesterday.
Today, I can't even play for 5 minutes.

"

The game is practically unplayable.
Funny enough, I was able to play without any issues yesterday.
Today, I can't even play for 5 minutes.

This is exactly my experience too, which makes me think it's not a problem on our end. I guess I'm gonna have to quit the league and see if they fix it on the next one.

OP has described my exact issue. I have similar specs:

I'm on Linux, Bazzite, Fedora 43
NVIDIA 4080 Super - NVIDIA driver version: 595.45.04
Ryzen 9800 X3D

I made several posts in this other thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3917556/page/3

I play on the standalone client thru Heroic Games Launcher, I don't use Steam. I don't think this matters though given all the similar reports regardless of system specs and client.

The crashes are so random, but it seems like, once I get that first crash, they just keep coming over and over regardless of what I'm doing. For example, I played for like 5 hours a couple days ago with no crashes. Last night, I played for about 3-4 hours with no issues. Then I went AFK for a few, idling in my hideout, when I came back, the client had close. I restarted and crashed about a minute in when taking my lousy Kingsmarch shipment. I then played for like 15 more minutes without crashing and went to bed.

Wish me luck today!

"

This is exactly my experience too, which makes me think it's not a problem on our end. I guess I'm gonna have to quit the league and see if they fix it on the next one.

I think this too, like there is something server side causing this. Because I have played for literal days with no issues this league. But I only have feelings to back that up, which is enough these days, right? :)

"

xodrul#4702 wrote:

The crashes are so random, but it seems like, once I get that first crash, they just keep coming over and over regardless of what I'm doing. For example, I played for like 5 hours a couple days ago with no crashes. Last night, I played for about 3-4 hours with no issues. Then I went AFK for a few, idling in my hideout, when I came back, the client had close. I restarted and crashed about a minute in when taking my lousy Kingsmarch shipment. I then played for like 15 more minutes without crashing and went to bed.

EXACTLY.

Here we go again.

I was able to play without any issues for the last two days.
Now I can’t even play for 2 or 3 minutes before the game just randomly closes.

Similar story, steam version of game & proton experimental, could play for days after league launch before the crashing started.

Beforehand I had some weird performance issues with vulkan and deleting shader cache did help for a moment before the stuttering begun again.
Tried switching to dx12 and the performance was better for a while.
Seemingly after some hotfix patch the game begun to crash very shortly after launching and this behaviour reoccurs with many retries with every renderer. Tried verifying game data, clearing shader caches and.

Now recently I tried deleting production_Config.ini, ran the game and so far no crashes.
Not sure if it actually was the solution or full moon and star alignments did the trick, but now I've been playing for hours without problems.

- OS: Fedora 43 (KDE)
- Kernel: 6.19.9
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (580.142)
- RAM: 32GB

"

rozeni#2790 wrote:

Similar story, steam version of game & proton experimental, could play for days after league launch before the crashing started.

Beforehand I had some weird performance issues with vulkan and deleting shader cache did help for a moment before the stuttering begun again.
Tried switching to dx12 and the performance was better for a while.
Seemingly after some hotfix patch the game begun to crash very shortly after launching and this behaviour reoccurs with many retries with every renderer. Tried verifying game data, clearing shader caches and.

Now recently I tried deleting production_Config.ini, ran the game and so far no crashes.
Not sure if it actually was the solution or full moon and star alignments did the trick, but now I've been playing for hours without problems.

- OS: Fedora 43 (KDE)
- Kernel: 6.19.9
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (580.142)
- RAM: 32GB

Can you tell exaactly where that file is which you deleted which fixed the problem? I tried to look for it in game dir but didnt found it. And if you game now not crashing anymore after the fix?

Currently stuck in another crash loop apparently. Same old, same old - nothing in logs, happens randomly, etc. etc.

I do want to share something I noticed when trying to trouble shoot a couple weeks ago and forgot to mention.
I was on Vulkan and decided to try DX 12. The game would still lock up as it does right before closing down when I crash, but it would actually recover after the freeze. The freeze would last for about 2 seconds and the Frame Time(?) graph on the in-game monitor thingy (the white line) would max out, then unfreeze, then the game would work just fine with no crash. This happened several times during my play session; instead of the frequent crashing, I was getting freezes and recovering.

It stopped doing that though and now I just crash as I had before.

Maybe the crashes are related to loading a certain asset or shader?

Maybe someone in tech support will see this and it is helpful. :shrug: