Cant download/install steam games to other internal SSD on Linux Mint

[CentreMetre]

Just installed Linux Mint on new PC and i tried to install a game to my non-boot drive. When i added the SSD it shows up as (External Drive()) which i thought was weird.

 

And when i get the where would like to install its also called that

Its not an external drive its an internal M.2.

 

And when i try to install games i get Disk Write Error when its on/finishes reserving space.

 

 

My OS version is:
Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia according the the command cat /etc/issue

My steam is 1.0.0.79 from the linux mint software manager.

 

I can otherwise write to the disk, and i think my os recognises its an internal drive, apart from the fact i can unmount it but im not sure if thats normal for linux mint.

[Eigenvektor]

Linux doesn't have a drive concept like Windows does (e.g. no C and D drives). Your second drives should be mounted to some directory. Then just pick that directory in Steam.

 

Is the drive formatted correctly and did you add it to fstab to be mounted somewhere?

[CentreMetre]

Just now, Eigenvektor said:

Linux doesn't have a drive concept like Windows does (e.g. no C and D drives). Your second drives should be mounted to some directory. Then just pick that directory in Steam.

Ah thanks, didnt know that. How would i do that? Its mounted in /media/centremetre which im guessing makes it think its an external drive.

[Eigenvektor]

7 minutes ago, CentreMetre said:

Ah thanks, didnt know that. How would i do that? Its mounted in /media/centremetre which im guessing makes it think its an external drive.

This talks about Ubuntu, but is basically the same for Mint:

https://askubuntu.com/a/125277

 

The information is somewhat outdated, you want to use the disk's unique identifier (UUID) to mount it. E.g. this is what my fstab looks like

# <file system>  <mount point>   <type>  <options>        <dump> <pass>
UUID=C30C-…      /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077       0 2
UUID=4d430347-…  /               ext4    defaults,noatime 0 1
UUID=26c39c38-…  /home           ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=5f85d55a-…  /opt            ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=65edfcd4-…  /var            ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=8d9b1183-…  /var/lib/docker ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=488594e1-…  /var/lib/snapd  ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=e36901ea-…  none            swap    defaults         0 0
UUID=fede1a65-…  none            swap    defaults         0 0

 

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/659

$: blkid
/dev/nvme0n1p1: LABEL="home" UUID="26c39c38-…
/dev/nvme0n1p2: LABEL="opt" UUID="5f85d55a-…
…

 

[CentreMetre]

51 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

This talks about Ubuntu, but is basically the same for Mint:

https://askubuntu.com/a/125277

 

The information is somewhat outdated, you want to use the disk's unique identifier (UUID) to mount it. E.g. this is what my fstab looks like

# <file system>  <mount point>   <type>  <options>        <dump> <pass>
UUID=C30C-…      /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077       0 2
UUID=4d430347-…  /               ext4    defaults,noatime 0 1
UUID=26c39c38-…  /home           ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=5f85d55a-…  /opt            ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=65edfcd4-…  /var            ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=8d9b1183-…  /var/lib/docker ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=488594e1-…  /var/lib/snapd  ext4    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=e36901ea-…  none            swap    defaults         0 0
UUID=fede1a65-…  none            swap    defaults         0 0

 

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/659

$: blkid
/dev/nvme0n1p1: LABEL="home" UUID="26c39c38-…
/dev/nvme0n1p2: LABEL="opt" UUID="5f85d55a-…
…

 

Ive mounted it to /mnt/games but i still get steam reading it as External Drive () after removing and adding it and i get the disk write error. Ive probably done something wrong but i dont know what. Should i mount it in my home ~ directory?

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

43 minutes ago, CentreMetre said:

Ive mounted it to /mnt/games but i still get steam reading it as External Drive () after removing and adding it and i get the disk write error. Ive probably done something wrong but i dont know what. Should i mount it in my home ~ directory?

 

You don't necessarily have to, but you may need to make the drive your user permissions as it may be set to write for root only by default.

For your purposes its probably safe to just do "sudo chmod -R 777 /mnt/games" to allow all users full access.  Although you may also have advanced permissions which I forget how that works as I disable it (not recommended).

 

Also if Steam was installed from Flatpak you may need:

flatpak override --filesystem=/mnt/games:rw com.valvesoftware.Steam

[CentreMetre]

23 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You don't necessarily have to, but you may need to make the drive your user permissions as it may be set to write for root only by default.

For your purposes its probably safe to just do "sudo chmod -R 777 /mnt/games" to allow all users full access.  Although you may also have advanced permissions which I forget how that works as I disable it (not recommended).

 

 

Ah yea i shouldve mentioned i did do `sudo chmod -R 755 /mnt/games` before my previous reply from the help of chatgpt (i know probably not the best way to get Linux help...). 

23 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Also if Steam was installed from Flatpak you may need:

flatpak override --filesystem=/mnt/games:rw com.valvesoftware.Steam

Im 99% sure it was, and ive just tried this, im still getting steam calling it "External Drive ()"

Also it has this path: /run/user/1000/doc/ce2e46ba/steam

So im not sure if that helps.

Also just seen that theres a folder called ".Trash-1000" in my games directory, not sure if thats related to the 1000 in the path shown above

Ill try restarting my PC and see if it changes anything.

 

Edit: Nope still doing External Drive () after restart

Edited March 10 by CentreMetre

[Alex Atkin UK]

Yeah I don't think I can be much help as looks like I'm using Steam packages for my distro as I think I had some issues with Flatpak myself.

 

I also moved my main Steam directory to a different drive, as my home is automatically backed up to my NAS when I logout, no need to do that for Steam.

[CentreMetre]

4 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Yeah I don't think I can be much help as looks like I'm using Steam packages for my distro as I think I had some issues with Flatpak myself.

Ah ok, when you say steam packages do you mean the install file download from the steam website or something else? On mints software manager theres another steam app but with "System Package" instead of "Flatpak (Flathub)". If i cant get it working with the current install ill try using something else.

[Eigenvektor]

1 hour ago, CentreMetre said:

Ah ok, when you say steam packages do you mean the install file download from the steam website or something else?

Software on Linux is typically installed through the operating system's package manager. So you should be able to install Steam through Mint's software manager/package manager.

 

3 hours ago, CentreMetre said:

Ive mounted it to /mnt/games but i still get steam reading it as External Drive () after removing and adding it and i get the disk write error. Ive probably done something wrong but i dont know what. Should i mount it in my home ~ directory?

2 hours ago, CentreMetre said:

Also it has this path: /run/user/1000/doc/ce2e46ba/steam

Sounds like some kind of permission issue. Not sure changing mount points would solve it. I assume you added the drive to /etc/fstab so that it gets automatically mounted at boot?

 

1000 is typically the user id of the first non-root user that is created, which means it should be your user account. This is a directory created for your user at runtime and contains files for running processes.

 

Both of these make me suspect Steam doesn't have regular access to your file system.

[CentreMetre]

9 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Sounds like some kind of permission issue. Not sure changing mount points would solve it. I assume you added the drive to /etc/fstab so that it gets automatically mounted at boot?

  

yep this is what i put

/dev/nvme1n1 /mnt/games         ext4    defaults    0

i know it mounts on startup aswell since i restarted my pc to see if that helped and tried to mount to test if it was automatically mounted and it was mounted

[CentreMetre]

Ive just installed steam via the deb file on steams website and now its sorta fixed in a way that it recognises it as /mnt/games but i think it still thinks its an external drive cos of the icon, or this could just be the noraml icon for drives that steam isnt installed on

But it has actually downloaded now and i didnt get a disk error when installing to my other drive.

 

AND its fixed getting shit FPS. I dunno how that affected games but computers work in mysterious ways it seems, or at least linux haha. This problem is solved (for) now.