Preserving uppercase filenames on vfat partitions

[Patrick Wiseman <pwiseman@gmail.com>]

Hello, all:

I recently encountered a problem others have run into before - the
default behavior on Linux of converting short, uppercase filenames on
vfat partitions to lower case.  Every time I mounted a disk with a
vfat partition on it, a directory with an uppercase name suddenly had
a lowercase name, and a script (which relied on its remaining upper
case) failed.  (For reasons irrelevant I was not able to change the
name, which, obviously, would have been a simpler solution had it been
available.)

It turns out that vfat partitions on Linux, for reasons I cannot
fathom, default to "shortname=lower", shortname being an option which
determines how shortnames of the 8.3 type are stored.[1]  Other values
include  "mixed" which preserves the filename as is for existing
files/directories.  It also turns out that which value shortname takes
is configurable.  On a GNOME system, in Applications, System Tools,
Configuration Editor, go to system, storage, default_options, vfat,
mount_options and change shortname from "lower" to "mixed".
Henceforth, hot-mounted disks in the vfat format will retain uppercase
filenames.

I hope that info is of some help to someone; the default behavior had
been driving me nuts for a while!

Patrick

[1]From the mount man page, under 'Mount options for vfat':

      shortname=[lower|win95|winnt|mixed]

              Defines the behaviour for  creation  and  display  of  filenames
              which fit into 8.3 characters. If a long name for a file exists,
              it will always be preferred display. There are four modes: :

              lower  Force the short name to lower case upon display; store  a
                     long name when the short name is not all upper case. This
                     mode is the default.

              win95  Force the short name to upper case upon display; store  a
                     long name when the short name is not all upper case.

              winnt  Display  the  shortname as is; store a long name when the
                     short name is not all lower case or all upper case.

              mixed  Display the short name as is; store a long name when  the
                     short name is not all upper case.