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!