Check your /etc/fstab for the mountpoint which contains the folder. If
it has «noexec» in its mount line, then the message you're getting is
quite correct. Although, you still can create another filesystem
without «noexec» mount option (more description `man mount´ can give).
In the image I posted it shows my fstab entry for the drive I am trying to add a library from (under #secondary drive or line 12) as you can see the string "noexe" is not in there. I already managed to fix it and load my games off of the drive by changing the name of the steamapps folder in the library which was named "SteamApps" to "steamapps".
Ah yeah, I misread that. Sure, it needs another error description! ;D
I can confirm the issue, the error message and the workaround, the NTFS partition is mounted without "noexec" option and renaming the folder "SteamApps" to "steamapps" solves the problem.
This is a hilariously misleading message and really ought to be fixed.
I'm being plauged by this myself, but in my case it's an EXT4 1 TB drive and it was working for a yeal, suddenly it doesn't.. started two days ago... it's driving me insane
I just encountered this issue this morning after an ubuntu 14.04 LTS kernel update to 3.13.0.59.66.
After the reboot, steam could not find my library folders.
SteamApps was in the default .local/share/Steam directory.
Just now, running 'steam' under strace made the Library appear.
When I run it without strace it's gone again.
@hlangeveld: see: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1479093
Ubuntu have fixed the kernel and released an update to this bug. They had released a kernel that caused ld to crash on 64 bit systems running 32 bit binaries.
However Valve could improve the steam error messages. :)
I struggled with this one off and on for months, changing my fstab in tons of different ways. Turns out it was capitalization? That's bonkers! Thanks for this tickets, otherwise I never would have found it!
Thanks for this. Was very misleading!
Just happened to me, fortunately found this issue after about an hour of messing around with fstab....
If anyone here can easily test this, the 2018-04-06 Steam beta client contains "Fixed a bug where trying to re-add old Steam Library folders to the client would fail with an error about the filesystem not being mounted with execute permissions". Please opt into the beta and check if this the Steam client's behavior has improved.
Closing as fixed.
Just here to chime in, this problem just stuck his ugly head out once again. Steam client up-todate, non-beta.
Error from launching steam in terminal:
sh: 1: /mnt/DS416_Data_2/Games/Zbox_Games_Steam/.steam_exec_test.sh: not found
CIFS mount options:
exec,vers=3.0,rw,credentials=/home/<user>/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,dir_mode=0777,file_mode=0777,uid=1000,gid=1000,auto
OS: Ubuntu Mate 18.10, also up-to-date.
Hello @jagdtigger, your issue doesn't match the issue tracked here. Please open a new issue report.
I originally found my problem here:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3812
But it was closed because its a duplicate of this....
While moving to a new computer I moved over my library and it had the "steamapps" folder named "SteamApps" which prevented it from being read, however, I got this error message when I tried to add my library http://puu.sh/dL7JY/cb471473f6.png "New Steam library folder must be on a filesystem mounted with execute permissions". I suggest a more appropriate error dialog for the situation to prevent future confusion.