How can I install and run Steam games on external drive? Because I tried to format the drive in ExFAT, NTFS and btrfs (the same of my machine) but with a filesystem I can install the game but it doesn’t start at all, and with another I can’t add the drive as other location on steam

    •  Joseph_Boom   ( @Joseph_Boom@feddit.it ) OP
      2•1 year ago

      I’m on Arch (btw) and the output of lsbk says

      loop0         7:0    0  55,7M  1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/core18/2790
                                      /var/lib/snapd/snap/core18/2790
loop1         7:1    0  43,2M  1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/custom-screen-resolution/27
                                      /var/lib/snapd/snap/custom-screen-resolution/27
loop2         7:2    0  40,8M  1 loop /var/lib/snapd/snap/snapd/19993
                                      /var/lib/snapd/snap/snapd/19993
sda           8:0    0 447,1G  0 disk 
└─sda1        8:1    0 447,1G  0 part /run/media/joseph/6446da44-5c96-4a5b-95a7-809b5bbccf79
nvme0n1     259:0    0 953,9G  0 disk 
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   260M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0    16M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p3 259:3    0 852,6G  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p4 259:4    0  1000M  0 part 
├─nvme0n1p5 259:5    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p6 259:6    0     8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─nvme0n1p7 259:7    0  91,5G  0 part /var/cache
                                      /var/log
                                      /home
                                      /var/lib/snapd/snap
                                      /

      N.B. sda1 is the external drive.

      •  CAPSLOCKFTW   ( @CAPSLOCKFTW@feddit.de ) 
        2•1 year ago

        I’m not in reach of a pc to test, but I think the problem is that the partition is mounted temporary. Try making a new mountpoint and adding it to fstab (with noauto iirc, so that your system does not hang when you start with the drive unplugged).

          •  CAPSLOCKFTW   ( @CAPSLOCKFTW@feddit.de ) 
            3•1 year ago

            Create a dir in a place you like

            mkdir (If it is in a dir where you have no write access, you need to sudo or doas)

            Unmount the automounted /dev/sda1

            umount /dev/sda1

            Then mount sda1 to the newly created dir

            mount /dev/sda1

            Then you can use genfstab to create a fstab entry. (You maybe need to sudo pacman -S arch-install-scripts)

            genfstab /

            This will write a fstab file to stdout (the terminal). Look for the line with , copy it and sudo open the /etc/fstab file with your prefered editor. Add the line at tge bottom and add the flags rw,user,noauto to the entry.

            This way you have to manually mount sda1 every time you boot with mount /dev/sda1

            You can add that to your .bashrc or equivalent. (If you don’t plan to remove the disk, you can skip the noauto and the drive will be loaded automatically, but if it is unplugged your system won’t boot normally). Maybe there is a better way, but this way works for me good enough.

  •  Johanno   ( @Johanno@feddit.de ) 
    3•1 year ago

    Mhhh as btrfs it should work. The only thing I noticed is the you have to stop steam connect your drive and restart steam for it to work properly

    My iscsi drive needs a bit to connect so I start steam 30 seconds later after login.

  •  Kes   ( @Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
    2•1 year ago

    Make sure the file system is ext4 and make sure the drive is mounted when you go to add the library on the external drive. A lot of games won’t launch on Linux if the file system isn’t ext4

  •  muhyb   ( @muhyb@programming.dev ) 
    1•1 year ago

    Format it as ext4, set auto flag on fstab and after restart you can select it as secondary library on Steam.

    Not sure about the part if you need to select it from Steam again after you reconnect it though.