So, I discovered weird behavior when trying to play games on an NTFS file system in Linux.

When i auto mount the drive through a fstab entry, it is only able to launch Linux native games (I think I read somewhere that this is a permission issue).

However, if I mount it through steams “select a drive” option, it works without a problem (so far at least).

I assume this is again a permission issue, as when I mount the drive through steam, I get a Polkit password prompt.

Anyone got a clue what’s going on, and/or maybe a way to make the auto mount work, so I don’t have to manually mount it after every boot?

Distro:

Arch

Kernel (according to neofetch):

6.11.1-zen1-1-zen

NTFS driver:

ntfs-3g

Proton version:

GE-Proton9-10

tested games:

  • Terraria (Tmodloader)
  • Project Wingman
  • Hades II

fstab entry:

#/dev/nvme1n1p1

UUID=E01A2CEC1A2CC180 /mnt/games ntfs nofail 0 3

full system update a few hours ago

date for future visitors (dd.mm.yyyy):

01.10.2024 at 14:44 (02:44 pm)

edit: formatting and adding proton version

  • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    3 months ago

    I’ve done my tests, and it looks like I may have been incorrect.

    Point 1. While I was right to suspect the : character, I discovered that it is permitted in NTFS and only reserved in Windows. When an NTFS volume is mounted in Linux, it only becomes a problem if the windows_names option is used. Sometimes it is used, sometimes it isn’t, and I don’t know when.

    Point 2. The other thing I found is that Wine only works if the wineprefix is owned by the user. NTFS doesn’t understand Unix-style file ownership and permissions, so it must determine the uid, gid, and umask when the volume is mounted. When mounted with OP’s fstab entry, it will default to root, so every file (including the wineprefixes) within the volume will appear as being owned by root, which prevents Wine from starting.

    This might also explain why mounting the drive dynamically worked, as it probably used udisks2 to mount it as the user.

    The solution may be as simple as specifying the uid and gid mount options. In a system with a single user, they should both be 1000, but you can check them by running echo $UID $GID.

    The modified fstab entry should be:

    UUID=E01A2CEC1A2CC180 /mnt/games ntfs nofail,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 3

    This will present all files as being owned by the user, and should allow wine to run.

    Point 3. That being said, mixing Windows and Linux is still not a good idea. I don’t know what will happen if you create wineprefixes on NTFS. Windows might see the invalid filenames and shit itself. I tried doing it on a new NTFS volume and Windows wouldn’t even mount it.

    If you really want to keep the game files on the NTFS volume, you might have better luck trying your own symlink fuckery. If you have the Steam library on the NTFS device, you could try moving the .../SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata directory to a Linux filesystem, then creating a symlink in compatdata’s place that points to the moved directory. This method moves the problematic files outside the volume.

    The second method involves bringing the game files on the NTFS volume into the default Steam library on the Linux filesystem using a bind mount – a way to mount a directory at a different mount point. In essence, this replaces the .../steamapps/common directory with that on the NTFS volume, and avoids creating wineprefixes inside the NTFS filesystem in the first place.

    • Mount the NTFS volume using the fstab entry above.
    • Assuming that you have the Steam stuff in their default locations, execute sudo mount --bind /mnt/games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common to create the bind mount manually.
    • Or use the equivalent fstab entry:
    /mnt/games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common /home/salty/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common none defaults,bind 0 0