Network drive on a steamdeck?

[󠁳⁧⁧ kadraa]

I have an ubuntu server at my home, and I keep some of the games I play on my main pc there, I have it mapped as a network drive on Windows and I just added a drive to steam storage tab in settings, but when I mount that same drive to the steamdeck and try to add it to steam storage, I press ok then nothing happens. Is there any way to do it ?

[Prezidentas]

You would need to use an NFS share for that, no idea if you can automount it with SteamOS

[tfk]

OP is probably using smb?

[󠁳⁧⁧ kadraa]

yeah i am

[Zef]

Originally posted by kadraa:

I have an ubuntu server at my home, and I keep some of the games I play on my main pc there, I have it mapped as a network drive on Windows and I just added a drive to steam storage tab in settings, but when I mount that same drive to the steamdeck and try to add it to steam storage, I press ok then nothing happens. Is there any way to do it ?

just use path share notation?

somthing like

smb://username@ipadresorhostnameserver/sharefolder and see that you can automount it during startup.

if not you could just make a bookmark in file explorer and launch it that way. (add to places)

but ideally, since it's a ubuntu server anyways you should look into setting up a NFS share

[󠁳⁧⁧ kadraa]

i use that already, but i cant add it to steam, but yeah i will try to set up a NFS share then ill see if it works, thanks yall!

[󠁳⁧⁧ kadraa]

ok I successfully made NFS share, I tried to add it to steam and i have the same problem, when i go to "Add drive", choose it and press ok, it doesnt appear as a drive for library in steam

[Zef]

Originally posted by kadraa:

ok I successfully made NFS share, I tried to add it to steam and i have the same problem, when i go to "Add drive", choose it and press ok, it doesnt appear as a drive for library in steam

That's not going to work well, you want to use a network share location as a drive in steam to run your games from?

Why?

I would only try this if you have a direct fiber connection (10Gbps) between client and server and only for older games.

It's just a bad idea in general, even if you can technically get it to work.

[󠁳⁧⁧ kadraa]

it is actually not bad at all when i do it on my main pc, that was my concern too but its good,so i wanted to try it on steamdeck too, because i dont have alot of storage on it and its too expensive for me to buy a decent sd card

[Zef]

Originally posted by kadraa:

it is actually not bad at all when i do it on my main pc, that was my concern too but its good,so i wanted to try it on steamdeck too, because i dont have alot of storage on it and its too expensive for me to buy a decent sd card

Yeah but i'm assuming you're using cabled ethernet on your rig, not WIFI. SMB on windows is generally also more performant then on linux, that's why everyone recommends NFS instead if you have the know how.

It's the latency over regular Gigabit that will kill this little project. Like i said it can be done, but you're gonna have load time and latency issues.

Avoid

[󠁳⁧⁧ kadraa]

oh i am using a dock to get ethernet on my steamdeck too, i guess it should be the same ?
i came pretty close, made nfs share and everything but i cant manage to add it to steam libraries now, ill wait for someone to answer, thank you too

[Prezidentas]

Originally posted by kadraa:

oh i am using a dock to get ethernet on my steamdeck too, i guess it should be the same ?
i came pretty close, made nfs share and everything but i cant manage to add it to steam libraries now, ill wait for someone to answer, thank you too

how are you mounting the nfs share? it should be mounted like a hard drive, i.e. it should look like just another folder inside the system

[Zef]

Originally posted by kadraa:

oh i am using a dock to get ethernet on my steamdeck too, i guess it should be the same ?
i came pretty close, made nfs share and everything but i cant manage to add it to steam libraries now, ill wait for someone to answer, thank you too

You did create a mount point on the steam deck itself right and installed nfs utils?

sudo pacman -S nfs-utils

&

sudo mount -t nfs <server_ip_or_hostname>:/path/to/nfs/share ~/nfs-share

[󠁳⁧⁧ kadraa]

I did create a mount point, it shows up as it should and i did download nfs-utils, my problem is that i cant add it as a steam library, if you dont understand me ill upload a picture

[Mahjik]

I didn't see this mentioned previously, so sorry if it missed it:

What file format is the share?

The reason I ask is that Proton will have certain requirements that need to be met with a filesystem.

[Zef]

Originally posted by kadraa:

I did create a mount point, it shows up as it should and i did download nfs-utils, my problem is that i cant add it as a steam library, if you dont understand me ill upload a picture

If you can't see the network share using "add library folder option" my first guess is probably file system or permission related.

For optimal results should be EXT4 or exFAT.