trevo525 / btrfdeck

This repo will get you from using ext4 on your Steam Deck's microSD card, to btrfs.

• 👋 About me: I am Jr Solutions Developer for Thornton's LLC. I got my Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Western Kentucky University. I have a wife that I love very much, no kids (yet), and no pets (yet). I have social media accounts but I really only check Discord and Reddit regularly.
• 🌱 I’m currently learning C#, WPF, and MVVM. I think I have a pretty good grasp of them at this point but I won't feel confident until I have a few more projects under my belt.
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btrfdeck's Issues

BTRFS formatted SD card not compressing, but working when I move the files off the sdcard then back on.

Hello,

I used your awesome scripts to format my sd card to btrfs. Everything seemingly was working fine but after installing a bunch of games onto the SD card, I noticed not much saving.

Long story short, I installed compsize ( https://github.com/kilobyte/compsize ) to check out how much compression I was getting. When I ran it against my steamapps/common folder on my sdcard, it was reporting next to no compression. I checked mount and it was indeed set to ztsd=15. Thinking maybe I just got really unlucky, and the games I chose just didn't compress well, I moved the files off the sd card and then moved them back on for the compression to "try again" and low and behold, it did.

You can see the whole process happening in my terminal below:

First compsize command is run pre mv, then I mv Subnautica to /home, then back to the sdcard and re run compsize, resulting in a pretty massive 3GB savings.

So, it would appear when I install new games from Steam, the compression DOESN'T kick on. Odd right? I've tried this with other games that weren't showing compression and had similar results. Just getting this in front of you in case you have any insight.

EDIT: I found the following command will force the compression without moving the files off and then back on the partition:

sudo btrfs filesystem defragment -rvf -czstd [folder of game you want to compress]

PSA: Advice against using this or test with a small inexpensive card first

I used the install guide to the letter and the installation failed at the end when returning to Steam Game Mode UI to format the card, now I have a 1TB Scandisk Extreme I paid £200 for that doesn't work and won't format in any form be it on Linux, Windows, using different software to do so.

Works after Converting Card to BTRFS, but SD Card icon won't go away

First, a big thanks for setting up these scripts to automate things as much as possible. Unfortunately, I had already filled up 2/3rds of a 1tb SD card before discovering this. In lieu of starting from scratch, I decided to experiment and (on a separate computer) do a brtfs-convert operation on my existing steam deck SD card. Here's the command I ran and the output:

sudo btrfs-convert --uuid copy -p -l primary /dev/sdb1                                                                                       1 ✘ 
btrfs-convert from btrfs-progs v5.17 

WARNING: non-unique UUID (copy): bc13434a-ad7d-45ee-8076-b2c6df5bfa29
Source filesystem:
  Type:           ext2
  Label:          
  Blocksize:      4096
  UUID:           bc13434a-ad7d-45ee-8076-b2c6df5bfa29
Target filesystem:
  Label:          primary
  Blocksize:      4096
  Nodesize:       16384
  UUID:           bc13434a-ad7d-45ee-8076-b2c6df5bfa29
  Checksum:       crc32c
  Features:       extref, skinny-metadata, no-holes (default)
    Data csum:    yes
    Inline data:  yes
    Copy xattr:   yes
Reported stats:
  Total space:    1023869452288
  Free space:     270688247808 (26.44%)
  Inode count:        62496768
  Free inodes:        62326062
  Block count:       249968128
Create initial btrfs filesystem
Create ext2 image file
Create btrfs metadata
Copy inodes [O] [    309269/    170706]
Set label to 'primary'
Conversion complete

I then mounted and defragged the card (on the same computer)

sudo btrfs filesystem defragment -r -czstd /home/crono141/cdrom                                                                                   ✔ 
ERROR: defrag failed on /home/crono141/cdrom/steamapps/common/20XX/BabelStoneHan.ttf: Input/output error
ERROR: defrag failed on /home/crono141/cdrom/steamapps/common/DARK SOULS III/Game/Data5.bdt: Input/output error
total 2 failures

I'm not sure if compression happened or not during the defrag. Here's the btrfs df before and after.

sudo btrfs filesystem df /home/crono141/cdrom                                                                                            1 ✘  4s  
Data, single: total=701.45GiB, used=626.68GiB
System, single: total=4.00MiB, used=144.00KiB
Metadata, single: total=920.00MiB, used=910.08MiB
GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B

After:

sudo btrfs filesystem df /home/crono141/cdrom                                                                                     1 ✘  1h 8m 49s  
[sudo] password for crono141: 
Data, single: total=701.45GiB, used=649.88GiB
System, single: total=4.00MiB, used=144.00KiB
Metadata, single: total=1.90GiB, used=956.97MiB
GlobalReserve, single: total=512.00MiB, used=0.00B

Anyway, I removed the SD card from my computer and put it into the steam deck. At first I though something had gone wrong, as the "Format SD Card" icon showed up in game mode. However, I went to the storage part of the game mode settings, and my library shows up, no problem, and says its the default install location (which is desired).

So it seems everything has worked, except the SD card icon is still present, and if I go into the general settings it shows the format SD card button. So I am wondering what about the format process occurs which tells game mode not to show the sdcard icon. Thought I would ask here as an issue to potentially expand our understanding and functionality (like for example, a "convert ext4 to btrfs script).

Any thoughts?

EDIT: Actually, the steam OS storage page shows the SD card, but doesn't show any of the games on it. However, I can launch any of the games I know are installed on the SD card no problem, even though game mode doesn't see them as installed. So maybe its an issue of registering the card with game mode somehow?

EDIT Again: Steam Desktop mode shows all the games on the SD Card no problem.

Progress Bar

Is there any way to make the progress bar work?

Consider mounting using `compress-force` instead of `compress`

Hello! It's been recommended that when using zstd, applying compress-force is slightly better.

The reason being that zstd's compressibility checker is better than btrfs' internal one, allowing for higher compression ratios without sacrifice. zstd won't attempt to compress if it itself determines that attempted compression would result in a larger file.

I think Steam Deck does not support BTRFS now

I recently realized Steam Deck Deck mode cannot recognize the BTRFS format SD card. Desktop mode can read and write BTRFS format SD card no problem. That's very weird. I did not change anything. I do not use my Steam Deck that often anyway. Just one day it didn't work.

I tried formatting the SD card in deck mode, but it says "checking" and then throughout an error.
There are 2 "rootfs" in the steam deck (I guess it uses A/B partitions like Android system?). In the 1st "rootfs", there is no "sdcard-mount.sh" or "format-sdcard.sh" in /usr/lib/hwsupport/. I think after a specific update, Steam Deck deleted the modified files.
In the 2nd "rootfs", there are "sdcard-mount.sh" or "format-sdcard.sh" in /run/media/deck/rootfs/usr/lib/hwsupport/, but the files are the original Steam Deck files (formatting and mounting as ext4).
I tried copying the modified files to the 1st "rootfs" (/usr/lib/hwsupport/), but in deck mode, the format SD card function still does not work.
I tried replacing the modified files to the 2nd "rootfs" (/run/media/deck/rootfs/usr/lib/hwsupport/), but it pops up an error saying "read-only system". I cannot modify this 2nd "rootfs".

I tried putting the backed up original "sdcard-mount.sh" and "format-sdcard.sh" files back into the 1st "rootfs" (/usr/lib/hwsupport/), and format my SD card in deck mode. Everything works fine now.

Conclusion: I think Steam Deck does not support BTRFS now.

why btrfs? why not NTFS?

I admire your knowledge and courage to modify steamOs scripts. Please can you try and modify them to accept a SDCard with NTFS filesystem ? I know that it can also support symlinks, it can be read and written under fuse/ntfs-3g, and it can support compression.
We can make the mount file to accept both btrfs and ntfs!
Can you try it Trevo525?

MicroSD not recognized on Gaming Mode after hours of use.

Not sure what the issue is exactly but I can't access my MicroSD on SteamOS. I can see it in the explorer and browse it but cant add it back as a steam library, it gives me the error "Steam library folder is not executable.". In Gaming Mode I think it wants me to format the sd as it can't read it.