Re: [PATCH] Ignore case when opening files in FAT

[Bean]

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 4:51 AM, Robert Millan <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 03:28:45PM +0800, Bean wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> As FAT is basically a case insensitive file system, we should ignore
>> case when opening files.
>
> I don't agree with this.  FAT itself just stores names in ASCII, which
> provides both cases.  It's up to the reader whether to be case sensitive
> or not (btw I recall this was discussed before).
>
> IMHO, case unsensitivity is a bug.  It's only included in EFI for legacy
> reasons.

We also need to consider scripts, like update-grub. It retrieve
pathname using host os. We need to be sure grub can read those
pathname. Our fat driver uses the same scheme as linux, which convert
all uppercase name to lowercase, but it doesn't match windows, which
preserves them.

Also, what's the drawback of this ? The linux drive also does the
same, it lists files using lowercase, but you can open files in any
case.

>
>> For example, normally efi image would be placed in EFI/grub directory.
>> After startup, the prefix would be set to something like
>> (hd0,1)/EFI/grub/. But inside grub, it convert pathname to lowercase,
>> EFI would become efi, so grub can't open it anymore.
>
> If the problem is that GRUB converts pathnames to lowercase, why not drop
> that conversion and let filenames be of any case?

FAT can have long filename, which preserve case. The problem is when
long filename is not used, in that case, it store them in 8.3 format,
which uses all uppercase.

-- 
Bean