F2FS Is The Latest Linux File-System With Patches For Case-Insensitive Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: F2FS Is The Latest Linux File-System With Patches For Case-Insensitive Support

Following EXT4 getting initial (and opt-in) support for case-insensitive directories/files, the Flash-Friendly File-System has a set of patches pending that extend the case-folding support to this F2FS file-system that is becoming increasingly used by Android smartphones and other devices...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=F2FS-Case-Folding-Patches

[elatllat]

What is the use of Case-Insensitivity on a file system?

[starshipeleven]

What is the use of Case-Insensitivity on a file system?

running programs that can't deal with case-sensitive filesystems.

In this specific case, Windows applications run through Wine, or Samba filesharing (SMB protocol, Windows shared folders) as the actual protocol is not case-sensitive or the Windows side does not expect case-sensitive names afaik.

IMHO this is MUCH less important than being able to disable the permission system (aka the owner/user/group read/write/execute thing).

[M@yeulC]

IMHO this is MUCH less important than being able to disable the permission system (aka the owner/user/group read/write/execute thing).

Yeah, that could be useful for removable devices

[starshipeleven]

Yeah, that could be useful for removable devices

Yes, that's the usecase I had in mind. Would have been cool if also Samsung made the F2FS driver for Windows too as the legends of old said, but I guess that's just an old man dream.

[cybertraveler]

...

IMHO this is MUCH less important than being able to disable the permission system (aka the owner/user/group read/write/execute thing).

A while back I created a family GNU/Linux computer with one user account for each family member. I tried to find a graceful way to create a shared area on the file system where all family members could freely read and write to it without thinking about permissions. The solution I ended up coming up with was creating an NTFS partition and a 'family' group. I put all the user accounts in that group and I set the fstab mount rule to make the group of all files/dirs 'family' and gave that group full rwx permissions. So basically, that mounted location forced the right permissions onto everything that went into it and there was no way a normal user account could run into problems.

It's a weird solution, but it worked out well.

I do wish that GNU/Linux had a more native way to do this. I know there are some permission bits you can toggle to force certain permissions onto files which go into a directory, but I've experimented with it and it has lots of little corner case issues which make it impractical for use by the average, non-techy person.

[discordian]

running programs that can't deal with case-sensitive filesystems.

In this specific case, Windows applications run through Wine, or Samba filesharing (SMB protocol, Windows shared folders) as the actual protocol is not case-sensitive or the Windows side does not expect case-sensitive names afaik.

Thats fixable in userspace, `find -iname? vs `find -name`. The user interface is free to do whatever and collect additional information, just think if everything displayed would need to be stored in the filename (like icons). FUSE could likely provide a case-insensitive view, or you could potentially intercept the libc functions taking paths. The downside is of course that someone could pry in files directly that have conflicting names when case is removed (solution would be to prohibit the direct access, like using a subfolder only root can resolve).
gotta be fun when the never ending unicode extension will lead to files that compare differently when moved between revisions. Or when someone figures that we need some folding for unicode emojies.

IMHO this is MUCH less important than being able to disable the permission system (aka the owner/user/group read/write/execute thing).

True.

[discordian]

A while back I created a family GNU/Linux computer with one user account for each family member. I tried to find a graceful way to create a shared area on the file system where all family members could freely read and write to it without thinking about permissions. The solution I ended up coming up with was creating an NTFS partition and a 'family' group. I put all the user accounts in that group and I set the fstab mount rule to make the group of all files/dirs 'family' and gave that group full rwx permissions. So basically, that mounted location forced the right permissions onto everything that went into it and there was no way a normal user account could run into problems.

Tthat falls flat on its face when using removable storage, as every computer would need that family group with the same numeric gid, and similary uids could mean different users. `deluser --remove-all-files hugo` would run over the mounted storage, remove everything with the same uid even if it was karl's files.

[starshipeleven]

A while back I created a family GNU/Linux computer with one user account for each family member. I tried to find a graceful way to create a shared area on the file system where all family members could freely read and write to it without thinking about permissions.
...
I do wish that GNU/Linux had a more native way to do this.

It's not exactly new feature, it's there since forever.
Set all users in the same "users" or "family" or whatever group, and then setting the SGID would have any newly creatded files inherit the permissions of the parent folder they are in.

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-use-special-permissions-the-setuid-setgid-and-sticky-bits#h7-the-setgid-bit

When used on a directory, instead, the setgid bit alters the standard behavior so that the group of the files created inside said directory, will not be that of the user who created them, but that of the parent directory itself. This is often used to ease the sharing of files (files will be modifiable by all the users that are part of said group). Just like the setuid, the setgid bit can easily be spotted (in this case on a test directory):

KDE has that in the file/folder property popup, Permissions -> Advanced Permission button. It looks similar to Windows's advanced permissions. And had it for a long while too.

I know there are some permission bits you can toggle to force certain permissions onto files which go into a directory, but I've experimented with it and it has lots of little corner case issues which make it impractical for use by the average, non-techy person.

I'm not aware about any issues caused by setting the SGID bit (and I used it for a long while in a server environment), and as I said above, it's not harder than doing it on windows if you are using a decent DE that does provide a GUI for it.

Could you say what were your issues?

[starshipeleven]

Or when someone figures that we need some folding for unicode emojies.

Every day we stray further from God's light.