Problem changing names to files

[AlfaOmega08]

Binary package hint: nautilus

If you try to rename a file, just changing one or more letter from upper-case to lower-case and vice-versa, nautilus will not rename the file, and give an error like "The file already exists" (or something similar, I don't know the correct English translation).

Ubuntu 8.04
nautilus 1:2.22.2-0ubuntu5

1) open nautilus
2) create a file like "test.txt"
3) try to rename it as "teSt.txt"

You don't have this problem when renaming a file on the desktop

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu May 8 22:17:28 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: nautilus 1:2.22.2-0ubuntu5
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-16-generic i686

[AlfaOmega08 (alfaomega08)]

Excuse me, I've to add that this happen only sometimes. I don't understand yet when

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your report, not here, that works fine for me, I've renamed a few files with the instructions you gave us and it's works fine, can you reproduce the same with another user on your system?

[A. Walton (awalton)]

Please be sure that your file system supports this kind of rename as well; Fat32 is both case insensitive and case preserving such that CaSE.txt and case.txt are the same file. Similar problems may exist with NTFS, but someone who's more familiar with Windows would have to confirm that.

[AlfaOmega08 (alfaomega08)]

Yes. You're right. The partition where I was working on is FAT32.
If I remember well, the fat32 fs itself memorize files with all upper-case letters. Are Long File Names extension and vfat that create the difference between cases.
Anytime it is a bug of the linux fat32 driver?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

right, the limitation is a microsoft vfat one, closing this bug, there is already some other bugs open about similar issues

[forero (manlio-lopez)]

Hello friends,

I do have a clue on what's happening:

This I just experienced recently and am inclined to say that the reason one can not rename the file to a particular fileName is that there is a launcher or perhaps some metalink pointing to a folder with the particular fileName AT THE LOCATION WHERE THE FOLDER IS TO BE RENAMED.

The one problem is with the error-message which implies that "there is already a folder with that name'. This happened in my Desktop, and HAS NOTHING TO DO with FAT-32.

This happened to me when I copied a folder on the desk top named name1 to some place else. Then in that somewhere else, I renamed the file to name2 and it was accepted. Then when I wanted the renamed folder back to the Desktop, the operation was OK. But a launcher originally within that folder would not work. So I tried to rename name2 back to name1 and I got exactly the error-message in this thread. I am sure I can fix the problem by changing launcher properties and renaming things to match. If not I just delete things and recreate back original folder and launcher. Note that I still have a copy of name2 in its 'somewhere else' place.

[forero (manlio-lopez)]

Dear friends,

On my one comment above, where it reads:
--------------------------------------------------------
This happened to me when I copied a folder on the desk top named name1 to some place else.
-------------------------------------------------------

"It should say "when I MOVED a folder on the Desktop named name1 to some place else."

Apologies.