Yet another Library Folder question: can't point Steam to other hard drive

[Ultraviolet Combat]

Hello, I literally just switched from Win7 to Fedora 31. I have swapped hard drives entirely to do this, but I had the foresight to move my Steam games to a separate drive on my PC. I should note that I have already looked at these two threads and that one GitHub page:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1693788202026704903/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/3491891042516568788/
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

However, I have a basic problem: I can't even get Steam to recognize my other hard drive, which is formatted as NTFS. All that shows up when I go to add a new library folder is the contents of my main hard drive, and nothing else, no option to change drives. Should I follow the above GitHub tutorial to even attempt to get Steam to mount my older game installs?

[truboxl]

On Fedora, external hard drives usually automounts in

/run/media/YOURUSERNAME/YOURDRIVEID

So you should make a mount point that does not change, maybe somewhere like

/mnt/YOURDRIVENAME

When configure on Steam, you should point to a directory that contains the steamapps folder NOT steamapps folder itself

[Amadeuce]

that is good info @ahmo thank you for that.

[Ultraviolet Combat]

So, basically, follow the GitHub tutorial, and make sure it isn't mounted temporarily? I think one of my links there stated somewhere that external drive mounts are temporary.

[truboxl]

@amade2

@RocketRunner Just follow the "Editing fstab" part in GitHub tutorial

/etc/fstab file is what makes mount points permanent on Linux

Just make sure the UUID is correct and reboot to take effect

You can also use the Fedora's included Disks utility to make changes to /etc/fstab file if you like GUI more

[🇮 🇻 🇴 🇷]

Might be worth mentioning that AFAIK you can't just point to a windows Steam folder and have it work on Linux -- perhaps you're not doing that but ...

Also maybe Fedora needs ntfs-3g (fuser ntfs) or similar installing?

[Ultraviolet Combat]

Well, I did end up having to use the Disk utility to edit the Fstab file. Gonna see if Steam has problems, but first, I need to see if it even works.

[Ultraviolet Combat]

Well, I think I got it to work, sort of? Steam couldn't see /media/gamedisk, so I tried manually "creating" the folder, only for it to tell me it's read-only. So, I'm thinking it *could* be done, I just need to see if I can make it writeable...

In any case, thanks for the help, I just wanted to see if I could even attempt it. If NTFS isn't compatible with what I want, then that's probably as far as I can go.

[Marlock]

Originally posted by RocketRunner:

Gonna see if Steam has problems, but first, I need to see if it even works.

To make sure Stem already works fine on Linux for you, you can install any 1 game on a linux partition and test this first.

Originally posted by RocketRunner:

Well, I think I got it to work, sort of? Steam couldn't see /media/gamedisk, so I tried manually "creating" the folder, only for it to tell me it's read-only. So, I'm thinking it *could* be done, I just need to see if I can make it writeable...

In any case, thanks for the help, I just wanted to see if I could even attempt it. If NTFS isn't compatible with what I want, then that's probably as far as I can go.

You should probably go back to this link and check your steps one by one to see if you did follow it correctly:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

If Steam complains that the /media/gamedisk folder is read-only, there is a high chance that you missed or botched a step in editing the UID or GID, or ntfs-3g wasn't installed, or you simply didn't reboot afterward editing fstab to let it apply this new setting.

PS: you can totally use "Disks" instead of editing fstab dirrctly in a text editor, but it's a little bit harder to follow the instructions. Did you figure out where the special parameters like UID and GID should go in there?


edit:
Check with the file explorer if the disk content is at least appearing in /media/gamedisk or if it is empty... if the latter, then the new fstab rule simply failed to apply... if that is the case, redo the whole thing.

Ow, one more thing that you should be aware of... on Windows, file and folder names are treated as case insensitive (ABC=Abc=abc) whereas on any Unix-inspired OS like Linux it is case sensitive (ABC, Abc and abc are different names and files named like like that can even exist in the same folder)... so if you create /media/Gamedisk but add a fstab rule for /media/gamedisk it might be failing just because of that.

[Ultraviolet Combat]

Originally posted by Marlock:

You should probably go back to this link and check your steps one by one to see if you did follow it correctly:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

If Steam complains that the /media/gamedisk folder is read-only, there is a high chance that you missed or botched a step in editing the UID or GID, or ntfs-3g wasn't installed, or you simply didn't reboot afterward editing fstab to let it apply this new setting.

PS: you can totally use "Disks" instead of editing fstab dirrctly in a text editor, but it's a little bit harder to follow the instructions. Did you figure out where the special parameters like UID and GID should go in there?

I don't know how to insert the UID and GID in the GUI editor (or, rather, I don't see how they can be inputted), though I did reboot after editing the fstab file through it. I only used the GUI utility because, admittedly, "sudo nano /etc/fstab" just didn't work for me for some reason.

Manually checking fstab does show that the UID and GID aren't in there, and I can only guess at how to include them through the Disks utility (assuming I just can't nano like the guide says). ntfs-3g appears to already be installed on the system.

[Marlock]

good, so we already know what went wrong!

If I recall correctly, when you are editing the mounting properties of a partition on "Disks", there is a textbox where "extra" (or "custom", "additional" or "advanced") "parameters" can be written (and some example text is shown)...

I'm not at my PC now, but let me see if I can find an youtube or screenshot online and post back with it...

ps: this is why linux users usually give steps via tetminal commands instead of GUI... even if a GUI solution exists (and frequently does) it is much harder to describe without help from screenshots and such

pps: alternatively you can replace "nano" with any other plain text editor you have installed that you know how to run from the terminal, or you can install nano with "sudo apt install nano" and try again

[Ultraviolet Combat]

Oh man, that's what was wrong, OS didn't come with nano. I don't know if I can re-attempt the one step from the tutorial now, though, since fstab already has the entry for the drive in it. I may have to manually edit that entry myself and try and make it match.

[truboxl]

nano is just another editor, you could have done it with vi (CLI) or gedit (mouse friendly)

gedit admin:///etc/fstab

If you just converted to Linux from Windows without knowing much, you are pretty alright for doing most Windows users would have gave up by now...

[Ultraviolet Combat]

Well, I edited fstab so that the entry matches the example in the GitHub tutorial, no dice, Steam still says that /media/gamedisk/ is read-only. I should have mentioned that /media doesn't even show up in the GUI window for selecting folders in Steam, but the fact that I can at least manually input the directory tells me I'm not 100% off-course.

Again, thanks for the help and support, everyone. I am indeed completely new to Linux, my experience with command lines has been pretty limited back when I was on Win7. The entire point of this enterprise was so that I could hopefully save some time and bandwidth by not having to redownload a chunk of my library, on top of having a few save files to finish, even though I know that there will inevitably be at least a few games in the disk's folder that won't launch on Fedora. (I should also mention I am also currently in the Steam Beta.)

[luzemario]

Steam adds some own data to handle games on Linux, so you cannot easily import your Windows games versions into Linux distros. Even using a ext4 partition, I would recommend to do a fresh Linux install of your game, then restore the saved games.

[Zyro]

Originally posted by luzemario:

Steam adds some own data to handle games on Linux, so you cannot easily import your Windows games versions into Linux distros. Even using a ext4 partition, I would recommend to do a fresh Linux install of your game, then restore the saved games.

I'd try restore and then verify data. It might save huge parts of the download.