Hi, CC afresh1@, with whom I've discussed this a little already.
If I make a FAT32 filesystem on a thumb drive on OpenBSD (using the default parameters) and mount it (with the default options) and proceed to make some strategically named files: ``` # touch a B aaaaa BBBBB longlonglong OPENBSD_OPENBSD # ls B BBBBB OPENBSD_OPENBSD a aaaaa longlonglong ``` And now mount that filesystem (with default options) on a Linux box, we see that some of the files appear with different case from how they were created above: ``` # ls a aaaaa b bbbbb longlonglong OPENBSD_OPENBSD ``` After reading about the mess they made with FAT filesystems, what I think happened was: OpenBSD made "long filename" entries for names that either didn't fit in the 8.3 scheme, or which were not all upper-case (the assumption, I think, being that files with no long filename will be displayed all upper-case anyway, at least on OpenBSD). The problem is that entries with no long filename seem to be open to interpretation on different systems: - OpenBSD shows them upper-case - Linux (by default) shows them lower case. If on Linux you mount with `-o shortname=win95`, then you get the same interpretation as OpenBSD. But is there (or should there be) a way to make OpenBSD display the filenames as Linux would? If everything above is correct, I think that would mean either creating all files (even if they fit in 8.3) with a long filename, or changing OpenBSD's interpretation of short-only filenames to be lower case. I see no mount_msdos(8) options that may help. Note that `-l` is the default: > -l Force listing and generation of Windows 95/98 long filenames and > separate creation/modification/access dates. I'm not sure if this is completely accurate. If we were really forcing generation of long filenames, then the files `B` and `BBBBB` should have had long filename entries, but they didn't appear to. Should the sentence be suffixed "if the filename doesn't fit in the 8.3 scheme"? Or perhaps the behaviour `-l` should be changed to *really always* create long filenames regardless of the length? I don't know. Why do I ask? I need to copy lots of files, preserving case, to an SD card for use in an embedded Linux machine on which I don't have control over the filesystem type or mount options. [One hack that I think would work for me, would be to rename all of my files lower-case before copying to the FAT filesystem. This would force OpenBSD to create long filenames, but that may not be suitable for every user's circumstance] Cheers -- Best Regards Edd Barrett https://www.theunixzoo.co.uk
