"steamos" folder just appeared on my Home and is now clogging my HD. Why?

[RagahRagah]

I love my Steamdeck but I'm a newb to a lot of PC (and 100% to Linux) stuff and I had a hell of a time figuring out the basics and how to get all these excessive "other files" off my Deck (I still don't know how to fully identify files I can safely delete or move to my microsd which remains a frustration) and finally had a storage size left that I was comfortable with.

Now, after not having gone into desktop mode for a while I go in to do some updates and I see a notification that Steam itself is being updated. Afterwards I am notified that my hard drive is too full to do
further updates. The hell? So now there is a "steamos" folder that is a whopping 15gb in my Home location and I apparently can't move it or link it to my SD card. Now my Deck space is almost full again and I am not mentally prepared to go through what I went through last time this happened where I basically had to factory reset the damn thing.

What is this steamos folder, why did it just appear out of nowhere and is it necessary?If so, I REALLY need help figuring out how to get my space down. As a newbie, there is nothing more frustrating with this device than trying to figure out why the entire disk drive is full when there's almost nothing installed on it. I know all about compatdata and shader cache, we're well past that. Every post on the subject says that these folders are the culprit, but even without them there is an absurd amount of extra files on this thing that I have no knowledge of. Whatever is bloating almost my ENTIRE hard drive in the local/share/steam location, apparently (again, there are ZERO games installed on the hard drive and no compatdata or shadercache; this is all on my microsd and my steam common folder is linked there as well) is none of that and I can't seem to figure it out. Obviously I had it down to a size I was comfortable with but now that this steamos folder suddenly appeared I'm now back to trying to have to figure out what I can safely delete from this thing and am pulling my hair out trying to once again. This is the one thing that really frustrates me with the Deck. Someone has to be knowledgeable to help me figure this out, right?

I'd really appreciate some help. Thanks!

[rawWwRrr]

Sound like you made changes that you shouldn't have. Most users are just going to boot the device and play games. They aren't poking around in the device moving files around. There's really no need to, unless you want to. And at that point if it breaks it's on you to fix it.

[RagahRagah]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von rawWwRrr:

Sound like you made changes that you shouldn't have. Most users are just going to boot the device and play games. They aren't poking around in the device moving files around. There's really no need to, unless you want to. And at that point if it breaks it's on you to fix it.

I haven't, really. The only moving I did was (by several recommendations) move the shadercache and compatfolders to the SD because deleting them makes no difference as they build back up quickly and if I don't do that this Deck is completely unplayable as the SD is full despite 0 games being present. Without moving anything I literally can't even play anything on my Deck. Literally playing one game on the Deck (which was installed on the microSD, not the main drive) was enough to fill the Deck with files that completely clogged my Deck, made it crash and I had to factory reset it. Which makes no sense. 64gb of space isn't enough to play ONE game on this thing?

There were still several mystery files taking up space but I didn't worry about it because after doing these things the space was manageable and stayed right where it was.

But after this ridiculous steamos 15GB involuntary install (again, what is this?) it's full again.

There has to be an explanation on this.

[ReBoot]

What is inside that folder? I'm kinda suspecting there's a game there or shader caches or, y'know, the usual stuff.... What's inside that folder?

[RagahRagah]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ReBoot:

What is inside that folder? I'm kinda suspecting there's a game there or shader caches or, y'know, the usual stuff.... What's inside that folder?

It almost looks like a clone of the main home pathway.

Home/steamos/offload/var/lib/flatpak/app is basically what it looks like.

Obviously I want to know what this even is before I do anything further.

[ReBoot]

That's not what the "main home pathway" looks. At all. Var is, as a matter of fact, a top-level folder on Linux. That Flatpak part might offer some clues about WTF this is there, but I really don't want to make any definite statements based on this little information.

[RagahRagah]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ReBoot:

That's not what the "main home pathway" looks. At all. Var is, as a matter of fact, a top-level folder on Linux. That Flatpak part might offer some clues about WTF this is there, but I really don't want to make any definite statements based on this little information.

That is what is there. From Home, there is a new hidden folder called "steamos" (that I cannot cut and paste and therefore run from the microsd) with a total of about 15 gigs that have those folders inside them.

[ReBoot]

... and what FILES are in those folders?

[Nx Machina]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von RagahRagah:

It almost looks like a clone of the main home pathway.

Home/steamos/offload/var/lib/flatpak/app is basically what it looks like.

Obviously I want to know what this even is before I do anything further.

Found this.

If you install any Flatpaks in Desktop Mode, those are stored /var/lib/flatpak/app -- again those are under the `/home/.steamos` directory.

The only thing missing is /offload/

[RagahRagah]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Nx Machina:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von RagahRagah:

It almost looks like a clone of the main home pathway.

Home/steamos/offload/var/lib/flatpak/app is basically what it looks like.

Obviously I want to know what this even is before I do anything further.

Found this.

If you install any Flatpaks in Desktop Mode, those are stored /var/lib/flatpak/app -- again those are under the `/home/.steamos` directory.

The only thing missing is /offload/

I'm not really putting this together. I didn't do anything myself; I just went into desktop mode, saw "Updating Steam..." and then this folder just popped up and now I have an extra 15 gigs basically filling what was left of my SD and I REALLY need to free up this space.

I also found reddit posts from people talking about this folder from over a year ago so why did it just appear now?

Sorry, but I'm not super savvy on this stuff. I just need to know what this is, if I can delete any of it, or how to free up more "other" space if I can't.

[RagahRagah]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ReBoot:

... and what FILES are in those folders?

Folder breakdown is like this, from Home:

.steamos > offload

offload > var, usr, srv, root, opt, nix

var > tmp, log, lib, kdumpst, cache

usr > local > src, share, skin, man, lib, include, games, etc, bin

srv > http, ftp

root (with a lock symbol)

opt

nix



Is that enough to go off without me posting names of individual files? The folders that have them or other subfolders have random names with words and numbers, some folders with names like "systemd-private" or "flatpak-cache" with numbers attached, etc.

The folder that has the vast majority of the content is (offload > var > lib >) flatpak, which has several other folders/files that spread out the 15 gb of data.

LMK if this is enough info to have any idea what all of this is.