this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
22 points (92.3% liked)

Linux Gaming

18152 readers
234 users here now

Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.

This page can be subscribed to via RSS.

Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.

No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.

Resources

WWW:

Discord:

IRC:

Matrix:

Telegram:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
monolalia@lemmy.world
22
Disk write error due to read-only filesystem (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by biofaust@lemmy.world to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
21 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Disclaimer: I am very new to Linux (1 week).

I have installed the Valve version of Steam on LMDE6. I have used Disks to automatically mount the NTFS drive I used with Windows (doesn't hold bootloader, it is just for Steam library storage) at boot ( /media/[username]/Gaming ) and I made it the default library folder in Steam.

Running games works perfectly (actually, performance is surprisingly good), but I cannot install them due to a "disk write error".

I looked for solutions and found this page, from which I understand that I need to change permissions to the mounting point, but when I do, using chown -R, I get a "Read-only filesystem" error for all files and folders.

I can see no options to fix this in Disks and I tried to edit fstab once, but it messed things up so badly I had to use the USB drive with the portable installer to fix things.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

NTFS support on Linux has never been good, iirc it still mounts NTFS as read-only by default. You can remount it as R/W, but it isn't exactly recommended

If you absolutely want to share the steam library between windows and Linux, id recommend either a second disk formatted as exFAT or a new storage partition on the same disk formatted as exFAT

The key here is exFAT, one of the best options for cross-OS compatibility

Edit: @biofaust@lemmy.world I just saw your reply to someone else in the thread that your steam library is on a separate drive already

So that's perfect! Just move everything off it temporarily and format it with exFAT filesystem and you should be fine

[–] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It looks like the ntfs-3g FUSE driver does have write support for NTFS (and just confirmed it when responding to @Drathro@dormi.zone below) NTFS is also, like most Linux filesystems, a journaling filesystem, which means that power loss on a mounted filesystem isn't going to corrupt the filesystem, whereas FAT is not.

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

It does look like there has been major improvements since the last time I tried this kind of shenanigans. Which admittedly has been many years, these days I just don't bother with dual booting so I'm free to just use the native FS wherever needed for the OS I'm using OR I have an intermediary like a SAN or it's on a VM or something

Still though, using a non-native FS in this manner is always more headaches than it's worth, the no journaling is a corruption risk true, but so is using a non-native FS just in different ways lol

IMO, the use case for this drive is storing re-downloadable data is perfectly fine for exFAT, worst case it corrupts and you have to redownload games from steam

[–] biofaust@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Thanks, I'll try the formatting thing asap.

Does it save me from the risk of filenames including colons etc that others were talking about?

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Yea the filename issue should be fine, there's a risk of corruption with exFAT though as @tal@lemmy.today mentioned, but if you're just storing steam games or other easily replaceable data, I wouldn't worry about it to much IMO