> Another I considered was to append ':ASH' to the file name and set the
> case of the ASH bit appropriately.[1]
Bad idea.
Several things that change the names have been tried before, Prefix dots
for hidden for example; they just don't work well. And as for putting
the archive bit in the name, a filename should not change just because
you touch it!
When you get down to it the S and H bits are a _lot_ like group ids in
concept; how would you describe the S bit ? ... "A flag that marks the
files that are special to the system" ... or perhaps "A field that marks
the _group_ of files that are special to the system"
> The choice of colon as a separator was made as has little special
> meaning in unix and is a banned character in FAT filenames.
It's used as a Unicode seperator with VFAT.
> > Eyuck!! But ...
>
> The big problem with this is that it makes assumptions about the name
> shortening algorithm used, AFAIK from my descriptions of VFAT the actual
> method is not mandated (and certainly not enforced by the data
> structures). So I would prefer a method which exposed a
> vfat_set_short_name() [2] to userspace, but this is easier said then
> done and has come up before.
The point is this is the method used by Windows and it's a small enough
subset of the possible methods to represent in this way. If you've got
a file that has a strange shortname then it wasn't created by windows
so even for windows it's shortname is probably irrelevent. But I don't
really like the idea of putting the shortname in the gid anyway.
> Again a mount option to form filenames in a "SHRTNAME.EXT:TheLongName"
> format might be one simple way round this problem, at least the idea of
Yes I suggested this in a message with the subject "Your backup is broken"
but while it's great for backups it's a royal pain to use plus you end up
again with files that change name when you write to them. And as for
symlinks; don't go there.
> both names being set together I _think_ alleviates some of the
> complaints/problem with the vfat_set_short_name() method.
'vfat_set/get_short_name()' is a reasonable interface for saving
shortnames that don't match a simple algorithm (eg number 1 or number
0 in my list)
> Additionally this mount option could be specified together with the
> above mount option for the rest of FAT attributes.
This is part of the problem; having the backup do a remount, or worse
having the user remember to do it is very ugly indeed. If it can't be
done (somebody is left logged in) your backup is ****ed. Much better
to have a program that scans the disk for unusual files and records
their oddness (SYSbits, ~87 shortname etc).
>
> TTFN
>
> [1] Use Permission bit for Read_only, so this then exposes all FAT
> attributes.
> [2] ISTR, we already have a ioctl for vfat_get_short_name().
> --
> Roger Gammans
> "If I have trouble installing Linux, something is wrong. Very wrong."
> -- Linus Torvalds
>
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--
Rob. (Robert de Bath <http://poboxes.com/rdebath>)
<rdebath @ poboxes.com> <http://www.cix.co.uk/~mayday>
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