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

  • muhyb
    1·
    3 months ago

    Huh, interesting. Didn’t know about mklink. So with this, can Steam games be used from NTFS directory?

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      Not really, because some files in the wineprefix will have invalid names.

      When an NTFS volume is mounted, it implicitly uses the windows_names option, which restricts the character set that can be used in filenames, in order to preserve compatibility with Windows. The specific character in question is the colon – it is permitted by NTFS, but it’s a reserved character in Windows, which means it is also restricted by the windows_names mount option. This prevents Wine from creating its c: and z: symlinks, which are required for Wine to operate.

      You could try some symlink fuckery, like linking .../steamapps/common to the NTFS drive, since all of the problematic files are located outside of that, in .../steamapps/compatdata. Or you could mount the NTFS volume directly to the common directory. If you do, I’d love to hear the results.

      Relevant issue: https://github.com/storaged-project/udisks/issues/713

      • muhyb
        1·
        3 months ago

        That makes sense. Thanks for the detailed reply.

        Though you could ask this to OP, they might try it. Personally I don’t use NTFS even on my external HDDs.