Flatpack Steam won't let me instal games on a secondary drive

[BlackStark62]

I am currently running Linux mint 21.1 vera and one of the recent updates to the flatpack version of steam has made it so that I cannot install games to my secondary drive where I intend to store them. Even after taking steps to make sure make sure the disk has appropriate permissions. When I make a new library on that drive and try to install a game it stops and reports a disk write error every time.

[tsoruu]

Same here, Want to make a unified Steam Library for Linux and Windows in an external drive, formated in NTFS. Running VanillaOS, which should be irrelevant (from my understanding) as Flatpak runs similarly to a container... Adding directory via flatpak override --user --filesystem=/path/to/mountpoint com.valvesoftware.Steam and adding the directory in Steam as an external drive didn't work as it shows that Steam binds the actively selected drive as /run/user/1000/doc/e639edc2/steamlibrary. Should I mount the drive first or should I just appoint the drive to /dev/nvme01px? Adding the mounted file system in the flatpak override seems like Steam just skips the Drive discovery as there isn't any error code nor the added drive in the Storage setting of Steam

[drguildo]

I also have this issue on Fedora 38. I have done flatpak override --user --filesystem=/mnt/foo com.valvesoftware.Steam and restarted Steam, but when I go to either add a new library, or create a new one, under /mnt/foo, it just silently fails.

If I create a new one, it seems to create the steamapps subdirectory, but it doesn't actually list it in the Steam GUI.

[Gamertech]

Mount the drive (/mnt/games for me), then add that path to Steam via Flatseal.

If flatpak apps aren't allowed to access something directly, paths show up as /run/user/etc.

[yanickrochon]

I have been trying to find a solution for this for a while, now.

The exact path to my external Steam library is set, and starting Steam I can indeed add the external library, however it can't see any game.

All games look like they aren't installed. When I try to reinstall one, the process hangs when downloading data. It seems like Steam has no read access to the external library?

When I browse the files of that library, it correctly opens Nautilus in the steamapps folder, and I can see all the appmanifest_???.acf files.

[Gamertech]

I have been trying to find a solution for this for a while, now.

You have to whitelist additional drives in the flatpak sandbox. The /run/user location is a temporary address punched through xdg-portals because you didn't allow access. It wont work.

• Ensure the drive is permanently mounted at /mnt/games or somewhere appropriate
• Download the Flatseal flatpak and exit Steam
• Run Flatseal, select Steam, scroll down to Filesystem, and in Other Files, add the exact /mnt/games or whatever mount
• Launch Steam and configure the storage drive

[yanickrochon]

@Gamertech thank you for the response, however this is what I did. But, now I have the other problem described, here : https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/689 where Steam won't show my files, but xdg-docum, somehow, has these files mounted and locked even is Steam is no longer running.

Well, this is not helping making Linux welcoming for Windows users!