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I am completely new to Linux, installed it around 10 mins ago any my first order of business is to get my HDD working. I have it set up and plugged in or whatever and there is alot of files on it that I can't lose, so reformatting or whatever isn't an option. I need to give it executable permissions so I can run the steam games off of it. How do I do this? I've browsed around other threads and looked at the stuff but some of it seems really complicated to a complete linux noob like myself.

Thanks in advance.

Kinand
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3 Answers3

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This error seems to be related to the permissions of the folder your disk is mounted to, for me it was mounted by the user AFTER log in, by changing it to log in at boot (moving the mount point to /mnt from /media), it was mounted as root and the error was gone.

Open the dash and find the disks app, open it, click on the hard drive with your games on it and then, on the right the little cogs and mount options and make it look like this

enter image description here

Now just open steam and then, from the drop down menus, go to >> Steam >> Settings, choose downloads on the left then click STEAM LIBRARY FOLDERS button.

enter image description here

You should see a box listing only your steam install directory, click ADD NEW LIBRARY FOLDER and point it to the location of your folder.

Now your new drive is added and it will look, something like, this

enter image description here

Now your Steam should ask you where you installed games at the time of installation.

Mark Kirby
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  • Tried this. Getting the 'New Steam library folder must be on a filesystem mounted with execute permissions'. Thanks though. – Kinand Sep 28 '15 at 10:47
  • Can you open that drive in the file manager ? – Mark Kirby Sep 28 '15 at 10:48
  • Yes I can open all the other files on that drive, pictures, music, videos, etc. I just cannot include my existing steam library. – Kinand Sep 28 '15 at 10:49
  • Do you have a folder on the second HDD that already has Windows Steam games in it ? – Mark Kirby Sep 28 '15 at 10:58
  • Yes, I have all my previous steam games installed on that harddrive under steam/steamlibrary/common/* and I am trying to get linux steam to recognize the steam folder as an ext library. – Kinand Sep 28 '15 at 11:00
  • In Ubuntu, open your home folder and open hidden files (ctrl+h) browse to ~/.steam/steam, in here is a folder called eaither `SteamApps` or `steamapps`, which one is it ? – Mark Kirby Sep 28 '15 at 11:10
  • Inside .steam/steam is 'steamapps' – Kinand Sep 28 '15 at 11:11
  • That is fine then, just make sure that there are NO SPACES in the FULL path of your second HDD and steam folder, I will try to find another solution. – Mark Kirby Sep 28 '15 at 11:13
  • I have checked the folder names and all contain no spaces or uppercase letters. – Kinand Sep 28 '15 at 11:16
  • Only one more solution I can find for now, please tell me what is your current kernel with `uname -r` command – Mark Kirby Sep 28 '15 at 11:35
  • 3.19.0-25-generic – Kinand Sep 28 '15 at 11:40
  • I just fixed this issue on a new 14.04 install, please see my updated answer :) – Mark Kirby Oct 03 '15 at 17:49
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Reading a bit the comments, you have a disk used by Windows, probably formatted in NTFS, so its partitioning DO NOT ALLOW Unix permissions to be set.

You have to emulate them when you mount it.

Follow the first part of this answer to know how.

Moreover, if you want to make it always mounted with exec permissions, you have to modify your fstab.
For this, I refer you to the official community page.

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dadexix86
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You can grant executable permissions using chmod. However granting executable permission to a whole harddisk is not at all recommended and WILL break your linux installation. What you wan't to do is run games i understand, and believe me you DON'T need to give executable permissions to a whole drive to do just that. Now, lets get to what you need to do to run your games.

First make sure are they windows game(ones which have a setup and are run by .exe file) or linux native games. Running a game native to linux will be very simple. You will most probably just need to extract it and run is main file by double clicking. Running a game you used to play on windows will require wine. You can find how to setup wine and run windows games here. Also not all windows games run smoothly in linux, check your game compatiblity here. Hope that clears it up, goodluck.

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H. Freeze
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  • I had planned to install WINE at some point and you've just reminded me, thanks. This doesn't really explain the executables problem though unless I'm reading it wrong. I still can't create/use my current steam library on that HDD. – Kinand Sep 28 '15 at 10:43
  • Check mark kirby's answer, i think it will be able to solve your problem. – H. Freeze Sep 28 '15 at 10:46
  • `However granting executable permission to a whole harddisk is not at all recommended and WILL break your linux installation` As written, this is not true. Root (/) is still a directory, and absolutely requires to be executable. Granting executable privileges shouldn't be done haphazardly, but 'break your linux installation' is a pretty strongly worded warning. Beyond that, your answer really doesn't address the problem. – Stephan Apr 30 '19 at 23:03