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Valve's steam client is now Open to all said a link and so I decided to install Steam Client on my Ubuntu 12.04 machine to try it out.

I downloaded the deb file from this page.

Once after the download is completed and I double-clicked to install it and as expected Ubuntu software Centre is launched but with error as stated below:

Internal Error "The file /home/pras/Downloads/steam_latest.deb can't be opened".

Even I tried to install it via

sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb

which also throws errors 

pras@Tuxbox:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i steam_latest.deb 
[sudo] password for pras: 
(Reading database ... 408406 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking steam (from steam_latest.deb) ...
dpkg-deb (subprocess): short read on buffer copy for failed to write to pipe in copy
dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste returned error exit status 2
dpkg: error processing steam_latest.deb (--install):
 short read on buffer copy for backend dpkg-deb during `./usr/lib/steam/bootstraplinux_ubuntu12_32.tar.xz'
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus ...
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 steam_latest.deb

So how should I install it?

Eric Carvalho
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Prashere
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    maybe the downloaded file is just corrupt? Try download a fresh copy and install it again. – Salem Dec 20 '12 at 13:56
  • Well, thanks for pointing out it. There seems to be a problem with their server. The file is around 5 MB while the download get interrupted at random places on every download I try again and again. For 1st time it stopped at 35% and next time 62% and something like that. So the problem is due to Incomplete download of the file. – Prashere Dec 20 '12 at 14:12
  • use wget as stated by nighthawk. wget -c http://media.steampowered.com/client/installer/steam.deb. If the download stops at the middle wget will be able to continue it. – Salem Dec 20 '12 at 19:06
  • There's an alternative method here. – Elder Geek Apr 18 '17 at 02:02

1 Answers1

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I had this same problem.

To get around it I used 'wget' in a terminal to download the file.

When the interruption happened 'wget' just reconnected and continued to download the file.

I used the following command

wget http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/archive/precise/steam_latest.deb

nighthawk-uk
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  • +1 Using wget to download worked better for me than using a web browser. Also note that using the dpkg command instead of trying to open the .DEB with the software center worked better too. – Ed Manet Dec 20 '12 at 17:36
  • I used Flareget to get the work done. Anyway thanks to Salem, nighthawk-uk and Ed Manet – Prashere Dec 24 '12 at 10:20