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Bug 92188 - Weird behaviour with filename casing on vfat filesystems
Weird behaviour with filename casing on vfat filesystems
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: nautilus
Classification: Core
Component: File and Folder Operations
2.9.x
Other other
: Normal minor
: ---
Assigned To: Nautilus Maintainers
Nautilus Maintainers
: 127869 132232 132990 155666 157225 164110 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2002-08-31 16:53 UTC by Jeff Waugh
Modified: 2008-12-16 08:13 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Jeff Waugh 2002-08-31 16:53:17 UTC
When creating a new folder with a full uppercase name ("PANTS"), Nautilus
displays two icons: pants and PANTS. Both work, but there's only one
folder. Once that Nautilus view is reloaded, the directory appears as 'pants'.

Folders created with upper and lower case characters work fine, displaying
only one icon on creation, and the folder appears as 'Pants' correctly
thereafter, too.

Folders created with full lowercase work correctly on creation and display.

You cannnot rename to change the filename case (it tells you there's
already a folder called "WHATEVER").
Comment 1 Elijah Newren 2003-08-09 15:22:01 UTC
I was looking through some old bugs and ran across this one.  I can
reproduce with nautilus 2.3.7.  As Jeff says, when creating the
directory 'PANTS' in nautilus on a vfat filesystem, both 'pants' and
'PANTS' show up in the nautilus window.  However, only 'pants' is
created.  This can be verified either at the command line, or by:
Hitting the up button in nautilus and then again returning to the
directory that contains the 'pants' directory (which will then only
show 'pants' and not 'PANTS').

Changing GNOMEVER2.0->GNOMEVER2.3, adding bugsquad keyword, setting
priority to high (so the maintainers can notice it; they can drop it
back down if they like), and changing version to 2.3.x.  Also, adding
myself to the cc list.
Comment 2 Antoine Pitrou 2003-08-23 19:19:18 UTC
I would like to add that the second bug is independent from the main
bug, i.e.:

"You cannnot rename to change the filename case (it tells you there's
already a folder called "WHATEVER")."

This is the case with any folder in vfat filesystems. For exemple, if
I want to recapitalize a folder (e.g. "heaven and earth" -> "Heaven
and Earth"), I have to first rename it to a dummy name. If I try to
simply recapitalize the name I get the error "filename already exists"
(which is understandable since vfat is case-insensitive, but should be
detected as such and not trigger an error).
Comment 3 Kjartan Maraas 2003-10-31 16:24:03 UTC
Is this still the same?
Comment 4 Martin Wehner 2003-10-31 17:38:04 UTC
I can reproduce this with 2.4.1. It looks like two folders get
created, but only one actually is.

Setting version->2.4.x.
Comment 5 Martin Wehner 2004-01-07 13:35:58 UTC
On a related note: I just commited a patch to gnome-vfs which allows
capitalization changes on vfat filesystems (See #130159).

Setting severity->minor & adding bugsquad keyword.
Comment 6 Matthew Gatto 2004-01-22 20:21:35 UTC
*** Bug 132232 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Martin Wehner 2004-02-01 21:24:32 UTC
*** Bug 132990 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 8 Tim Herold 2004-05-10 14:46:33 UTC
*** Bug 127869 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Elijah Newren 2004-12-29 19:23:06 UTC
*** Bug 157225 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Elijah Newren 2004-12-29 19:23:52 UTC
Last duplicate was in 2.9.x, so updating the version number.
Comment 11 Sebastien Bacher 2005-01-31 00:32:14 UTC
*** Bug 164110 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Sebastien Bacher 2005-02-03 21:26:57 UTC
*** Bug 155666 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Martin Ott 2006-03-17 00:51:50 UTC
Almost had been posting another duplicate for the bug.
Credits go to Juhaz on #gnome for finding it out for me.

Two folders or files (uppercase and downcase names, using nautilus 2.12.1 for example) will appear only as far as the new file is named in uppercase 8.3 format (eg to have a short file name in fat32 terms)

Juhaz also noted that it is propably gnome-vfs or fam/gamin related bug.
That would be because the kernel/fat driver doesn't do the magical lower-casing trick for longer names or mixed-case names.
This is how it seems to be happening, based on short inspection:
1) nautilus creates the file/folder, so it expects it to exist
2) kernel turns it to lowercase name
3) fam/gamin/gnome-vfs tells nautilus that lowercased name has been created but it _doesn't_ tell it that uppercased name has been deleted, because it actually never existed.

So nautilus shows the "new" lowercased name, but also thinks the old one is there because it didn't get "deleted" event.


Might be that nautilus should start to make a difference for case-insensitive file-systems...
Maybe there should be special-casing for this, either to ignore the initial notice of new file, or alternatively to hide the uppercase one when it's received.
Comment 14 Lowson Chao 2006-03-28 10:37:06 UTC
I have a problem about moving folders from ext3 to vfat.
two folders "TEST" and "test" are exist ext3 filesystem normally. When moving two them to vfat filesystem using Nautilus 2.12.1, only one folder exist. And another folder was disappear on ext3 and vfat. I have known lowercase and uppercase name is the same on vfat filesystem. I think disappered folder should keep on ext3 filesystem.
Comment 15 Tor Harald Thorland 2006-04-25 11:34:55 UTC
Comment #14 This is a nother issue, please create a new bug on that one.

As for the original bug... Can we close it? I'm unable to reproduce it.
Comment 16 Christian Neumair 2006-04-25 11:45:22 UTC
The issue in general is that for case-insensitive file systems, a resource URI is not unique. Maybe we can somehow canonicalize the file names, or have means to detect that the underlying FS for a particular URI is case-insensitive, so that we can g_ascii_strncasecmp entities.
Comment 17 Joachim Noreiko 2006-11-16 17:03:02 UTC
On a FAT32 filesystem, I can't rename "pants" to "PANTS" -- I get a conflict warning.
Is that another aspect of this bug?
Comment 18 Emmanuel Fleury 2008-11-18 21:03:09 UTC
I cannot reproduce this bug anymore on 2.20.0. Can somebody confirm it's still here ??? (my guess is that it should be tagged as OBSOLETE)
Comment 19 lexual 2008-12-16 08:13:35 UTC
can't reproduce 2.24 from fedora 10.

Maybe gvfs issue fixed in gio?