Steam manages to launch Games at first, but doesn't anymore

Akelun

(The lighter grey area in Konsole can be ignored, it's code that has been used to launch Steam. The code to try to launch a game is below)

Hi,

I successfully installed Solus again on my new hard disk (I had to replace my 2016 SSD (too old).
I am still VERY happy and satisfied with that OS. But there is one thing that I don't manage to make it work:

To share my 4 To SSD's personal files with windows, I split my Linux Data (160 Go) with my files and games Data (3.45 To). I split that partition with Windows (in Dual boot on another SSD), so it's a NTFS partition type I can use on Windows 10 as well.

On that partition, everything works well, except, as you can guess from the title, my Steam games. I managed to launch each of them at first, but now, it doesn't launch any more. What it does is that when I press "Play", it tries to launch, but after a short while, it goes back to a "Play" button, and nothing is launched.

I opened Steam with Konsole to see what messages it get. I see a message saying:
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/artaingus/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Proton - Experimental/files/lib64/wine/x86_64-windows/msado15.dll' -> '/run/media/artaingus/DATA/GAMES (linux)/steamapps/compatdata/548430/pfx/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/System/ADO/msado15.dll'
which, I guess, may be the issue?

I made some research and found out that the problem may be that Steam doesn't have access permission to my partition where the games are installed any more. I was suggested to link compatdata from /home/ to the one in /media/ with a "ln -s" command, but I didn't manage to make it work (maybe I'm too ~~dumb~~ inexperienced in Linux to understand how to use that command).

Can someone help me, please?

(I'm on Solus 4.5 / KDE Plasma 6.1.2 / Session X11 / NVidia GeForce 3080 (Proprietary drivers installed with 32 bits)
Games had been launched successfully only once: after the Steam installation)

If this can help:

CompatData location on Linux partition: /home/artaingus/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/
CompatData location on my games' partition: /run/media/artaingus/DATA/GAMES (linux)/steamapps/compatdata/

SethStorm666

IS the game partition NTFS? If so, this could be problematic. How did you install Steam from the repo or flatpak?

EDIT: the path is from the repo I see now.

Akelun

SethStorm666 It's NTFS, yes, since I made the partition with Windows before installing Solus to make sure I could explore it from both systems easily.

And I installed Steam from the repo.

Why NTFS could be an issue? I always use it on one of my disk / partition in Dual Boot and never had a problem until now (never tried to use Steam games on Linux until now, though, I have to admit)... Does it block Steam games in any way? =X

EDIT: Should I convert my partition to another type (and which one if I want it to work on dual boot Windows as well?)? Is it even possible to convert a partition, or should I create a new one and tranfer my files on it?

Akelun

I made a test, and moved the games' folder of 2 games to my Linux partition, and indeed, the games launch on it.
So visibly, using a different partition I have to mount when I start my computer IS the problem.
The questions now are...

Is that because Steam doesn't have the permission to link with that partition?
Is that because it's a NTFS partition?
Or is that because of both?

Akelun

I made my own researches and understand better the issues and differences with the partition types. In the end, there is no great partition type to share a disk with Linux and Windows.

ExFAT is a good compromise but is mildly performant for any of the systems.
NTFS is usable and the only one recommanded for Windows, but not perfect for Linux and bad for games and files which require permissions on the latter.
Ext4 is barely readable for Windows, only with a software, and can't be used on Windows to write files, but works perfectly on Linux.
Everything else doesn't seem to be usable on both systems at all.

Well, it took me a long time to do so (because KDE partition manager decided to crash constantly, so I had to use Windows' disk partition to split DATA then GParted to extend Linux), but I decided to split my NTFS partition "DATA" to give more space to my Linux BtRFS partition in order to install my games on it, so it can work. It indeed fixed my issue, so I guess we can consider that topic as solved.

MikeK61

I had the same issue with hard drives and games on linux.
I tried Heroic Games Launcher and it works fine.
All my games i bought from Epic or GOG are stored on a ntfs drive (2TB nvme)
All are working perfectly fast and stable.
I don`t buy games on steam anymore.