I am having a curious problem that is making it very difficult for me to sync files between my main hard drive and an external hard drive that I have (I use JfileSync, but the problem also occurred with Unison, and seems independent of the software).
The problem: certain files and folder names change case (or appear to change case–I say appear because when I look at the hard drive attached to a windows machine, the cases appear unchanged) from the hard drive to the external. I can’t figure out why, because it appears to be at random. For instance, I have a folder on my hard drive called ‘BSP’, which shows up as ‘bsp’ on the external (but when attached to a windows machine shows up as ‘BSP’). A jpeg named MDC0531.jpg becomes mdc0531.jpg (but not all uppercase jpegs appear as lowercase on the external drive).
There are two many files to go through each and manually change the cases so that synchronization works properly. Does anyone have an idea why this is happening, and how I can fix it without doing it the hard way?
My first guess is that this is an OS or filesystem issue. Most
operating systems and filesystems are case-sensitive so ‘file’ and
‘FILE’ and ‘fIlE’ are three separate files that can all exist in the
same directory without any problems. windows is not case-sensitive but
is case-aware meaning it will access ‘file’ regardless of how you ask
for it case-wise but at the same time does recognize a case when asked
so it will tell you about ‘file’ when asked directly. My guess is that
something on the case side is happening in windows showing it one way
while the real way is probably what Linux is showing. As an example you
can probably see on windows directly type ‘dir /X c:’ and you will
probably see that ‘c:\PROGRA~1’ and ‘c:\Program Files’ are both valid
ways to access the program files directory. Part of the old DOS
shortname thing may affect this as well.
Obviously this is all speculation but considering how microsoft handles
case it’s the best guess I can come up with at this point. How is it
affecting you adversely in your situation? Perhaps a solution can be
found to work either way.
Good luck.
ldestes wrote:
| I am having a curious problem that is making it very difficult for me to
| sync files between my main hard drive and an external hard drive that I
| have (I use JfileSync, but the problem also occurred with Unison, and
| seems independent of the software).
|
| The problem: certain files and folder names change case (or appear to
| change case–I say appear because when I look at the hard drive
| attached to a windows machine, the cases appear unchanged) from the
| hard drive to the external. I can’t figure out why, because it appears
| to be at random. For instance, I have a folder on my hard drive called
| ‘BSP’, which shows up as ‘bsp’ on the external (but when attached to a
| windows machine shows up as ‘BSP’). A jpeg named MDC0531.jpg becomes
| mdc0531.jpg (but not all uppercase jpegs appear as lowercase on the
| external drive).
|
| There are two many files to go through each and manually change the
| cases so that synchronization works properly. Does anyone have an idea
| why this is happening, and how I can fix it without doing it the hard
| way?
|
| I am using OpenSuse 10.3 KDE 3.5.8 release 33.2.
|
| Thanks!
|
|
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I had the same issue, luckily it is easy to solve. Open up Konqueror and navigate to sysinfo:/ then right click on your USB hard drive in the top right and click ‘Properties’. Then click the ‘Mounting’ tab. In the drop down box at the bottom click ‘Mixed’. Now switch off your hard drive and then switch it back on. Your files should now look the same as they do on Windows.
I’m having the same problem and I tried to follow this instructions, but - maybe it’s because I’m using Gnome and not KDE - with Nautilus I cannot navigate to “sysinfo:/” and if I ctrl+C ctrl+V it says its impossible to show this (it does not recognize it).
I’ve tried right-clicking the external USB-drive icon on my desktop and also on the folder that appears on Nautilus (under “/media”), but the Proprerties window does not show, on neither method, the mounting tab.
Using the Properties of /media icon, I get: General, Tags, Permissions, Open with, Notes, Share. And using the Properties under the Desktop icon I see; General,*Tags, Permission, Notes, Drive, Volume. (expressions might not be exact as I’m translating from French).
Does any one knows how could I get to this “mixed” mounting options under Gnome?
I think it is because of GNOME. I do not normally use GNOME but I may have the answer. Right click on the icon on your desktop and click ‘Properties’. You say you have one tab called ‘Volume’, does it look like this:
Thank you very much. This would most certainly had solved my problem if I had just waited for it…
The problem is that yesterday night, trying to figure out a way of getting it work correctly, just after posting my message, I try this, but instead of typing “shortname=fixed” on the mounting option, I only typed “mixed” (a wrong guess, I guess).
And now when connecting it, it won’t mount anymore, an error message comes with: “Impossible to mount the volume. Incorrect mounting option when mounting the volume HD100”. And even though I can still see the external drive icon under “/media” the “volume” tab option is not present on its properties anymore…
Sorry for being so impatient.
Do you know how to fix this?
Thank you once again!
PS: I already try connection the same external HD on other OS, such as a Mac and on Ubuntu, and they do mount it without any problem. Under Ubuntu I have the same option under “Properties - Volume” but it doesn’t shows my “mixed” error or anything that I could try undo.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to type “shortname=fixed”, I meant to type “shortname=mixed” - I made a mistake. You should have typed “shortname=mixed”, that was the right thing to do. I don’t know why it is not working, I’m sorry. It should work.
Perhaps if you create a new forum thread you’ll get some more attention from some different people who can solve it for you. This is now too complicated for me, I just don’t know.
Nothing to be sorry for, it was really my mistake, I’ve tried this before you post your answer.
Now it is solved. Just in case someone could benefit from this, I’ll register in here how I managed to get my external hard drive to be mountable again for it wasn’t really complicated.
First thing was to get to know which application could let me change mounting options, since I could not access it from the Properties anymore. Being used to Debian-based distributions, I was searching for something like Gparted, but could not find in openSUSE.
So I went to YaST, where I could find a Partitioner tool under System. I’ve clicked on it, waited for the disks to be found and loaded on a list where I could see my external “HD100”. After having select it, I choose “Modify” from the buttons below.
Then, in the new window, on the field “Mounting point” (Point de montage) I wrote “/media/HD100” and, after, clicked on the button “Options Fstab” and I finally inserted the expression “shortname=mixed” under the field “Arbitrary mounting options” (Valeur option arbitraire). And then Ok, Ok, Ok.
The external HD was mounted automatically afterwards, but I still have to check whether the initial problems (case changes) its now solved. I’ll try this and post back.
Hope this might help someone with the same problem.
Just to let people know: adding “shortname=mixed” really solved the case-changes problem.
Now, when synchronizing data from one to another HD, Unisons only shows the real changes made into the files/folders.
But, of course, still doesn’t work… But the problem is something else, something to do with permissions.
For instance, for a file name “Donwload day 2008.pdf”, that’s the message I get from Unison:
GNU/Download Day 2008.pdf
Error in setting permissions:
Opération non authorized [chmod(/media/HD100/Documents/GNU/.unison.Download Day 2008.pdf.3613e529e9465f588977646c3f7d2ac2.unison.tmp)]
So, I guess I’ll be doing a little more search and when/if I ever got the answer to this I’ll come back to let you know.
But the problem is something else, something to do with permissions.