Can't use all uppercase names for folders and files on fat32 drives

[mydisplayname2312]

On Ubuntu 9.10 Beta 32-bit, any folder name or file name with all uppercase letters is changed to lowercase on fat32 drives.

- Open Nautilus or Terminal
- Create a folder or file with all uppercase letters in the name on a fat32 formatted partition
- Refresh view or ls

This also happens when using Meld. Comparing two directories, one non-fat32, one fat32, will change all uppercase items to lowercase.

This doesn't happen on 9.04.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Oct 2 04:06:57 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Package: nautilus 1:2.28.0-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-11.36-generic
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-11-generic i686

[Rory McCann (rorymcc)]

I don't think this is a problem with ubuntu, but a limitation with the FAT32 filesystem, since it's a case insensitive filesystem.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-sensitive

That page also lists that FAT32 is a partial case preserving filesystem, so it isn't a fully case preserving file system.

I can confirm that this behaviour occurs on 9.04.

[Mansour Behabadi (oxplot)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 428174, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.