FAT32 case insensitive directory names (but trying to preserve case)

[Wangberg]

okay....short of ripping my hair out, i have a slight grasp of what is going on....i did a google search and found out a lot about FAT32 (which i have concluded is the biggest piece of crap and MS along with it's developers of FAT should be burned at the stake for creating a file system that is not case sensitive).

but moving forward...

I'm trying to create file names with capital letters on a FAT32 external USB hard drive. I understand that ms 8.3 file naming system is used to shorten names and blah blah blah....but also is not case sensitive, BUT does have the ability to preserve capital letters in file and directory names. SO.... the directory on a FAT32 drive named "bob" is the same as "BOB". in a terminal if you create the directory Bob, bOB, BoB, BOB, or boB it's the same as "bob" always, on the fat32 drive. The same if you were to remove it. Any combination of capital or lower case letters all mean the same on FAT32 filesystems (again...kill the fat developers now).

but here is my problem:

[mike@solo NURACHI]$ mkdir DHT
[mike@solo NURACHI]$ ls
books          maps                      Recycled
centos.backup  music.media               rui's pics & music
dht            My Documents - Backed up  shapefile_geo94.zip
f              ndiswrapper-1.37.tar.gz   System Volume Information
Incoming       new                       websites
[mike@solo NURACHI]$ rm -rf dht
[mike@solo NURACHI]$ mkdir Dht
[mike@solo NURACHI]$ ls
books          maps                      Recycled
centos.backup  music.media               rui's pics & music
Dht            My Documents - Backed up  shapefile_geo94.zip
f              ndiswrapper-1.37.tar.gz   System Volume Information
Incoming       new                       websites
[mike@solo NURACHI]$

as you can see, when i try and create a directory called DHT (all caps) it is not created. It is created as lowercase. HOWEVER, nataulius will see the file as all capped...the term will not. I belieive that natulius is doing it's job in interpreting the preserved capital letters. WHen i create a directory named Dht, the first capital letter IS preserved.

Question 1: why does the terminal not display or "preserve" capital letters in directory names when written to a fat32 filesystem using the mkdir command? There are several directories that were made prior to it's use on a linux system and they all display properly in the term. For Example the My Documents folder you can see listed above.

From my earlier google search i found a post on linuxquestions.org (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi....php?p=2853760) and i actually was able to replicate the instructions, but later ran into the problem i have stated above. I cannot create a directory name that is all capitalized. See below for example:

[mike@solo NURACHI]$ mkdir MMMMMMMMM
[mike@solo NURACHI]$ ls
books          MMMMMMMMM                 Recycled
centos.backup  music.media               rui's pics & music
f              My Documents - Backed up  shapefile_geo94.zip
Incoming       ndiswrapper-1.37.tar.gz   System Volume Information
maps           new                       websites
[mike@solo NURACHI]$ mv MMMMMMMMM/ MMM
[mike@solo NURACHI]$ ls
books          mmm                       Recycled
centos.backup  music.media               rui's pics & music
f              My Documents - Backed up  shapefile_geo94.zip
Incoming       ndiswrapper-1.37.tar.gz   System Volume Information
maps           new                       websites
[mike@solo NURACHI]$

Question 2: WITHOUT changing file systems (that is not a feasible solution), how can i get these damn directory names to be 100% capital letters without the filename being over 8 characters long? In addition to that, how can i get the terminal to display or preserve the letters to be all capital?

Please...this is driving me insane...

[Seve]

Hello:
umount your vfat partition and then use gconf-editor
if you don't have it installed use yum
yum install gconf-editor
then launch gconf-editor
/system
/storage
/default_options
/vfat
and right click on the key in the right hand window and select edit and change the shortname=xxxxxx
to
shortname=mixed
exit
remount your vfat drive and you should be good to go

you can then check your /etc/mtab file to see the mount option(s)

Seve

[Wangberg]

THANK YOU !

Problem Solved

[Figment]

Is there an equivalent method for KDE? This doesn't seem to fix the problem for me.

[Seve]

Hello:
Not sure why it doesn't work for you? I don't think the DE has any effect on it, however, I could be mistaken.

If your vfat partition has an entry in your /etc/fstab file, you can add the mount option
shortname=mixed

Again, first unmount your vfat partition(s) make your changes to your /etc/fstab, save, then
mount -a
and see how it goes.

Seve