Comment 2 for bug 68153

I'm 99% sure that the problem is that after renaming to FSCK9999.REN fsck.vfat tries to rename a file to FSCK10000.REN. This is not a legal 8+3 dos file name (it's 9+3, not 8+3). This without checking the code. I therefore am worried that your questions are on the wrong track. I'll try and answer anyway:

I'll try and answer but don't have a lot of good answers for several reasons:

The disk was formatted as vfat, I think that was done from a mac (my brothers disk, not mine, I'm just tech-support :-)

The disk in question was an external USB storage, one partition, 250GB. The disk was defect so I sent it in and got my money back. Don't have it anymore, so I can't give exact details, this from memory:

* Was a specific file, or group of files, involved?

Yes, a collection of MP3s

* What names did affected files have?

Typical mp3 file names - Directories with artist, subdirs for album, varying track file names.

* Were they all in the same directory, what was the name of that directory?

No, lots of directories.

* How big was the partition that contained the files?

250GB (whole disk)

* Which language was the file system?

Not sure. Not sure what you mean either? Does vfat support UTF-8? The computers using the disk were using either US english (default) or norwegian (nb_NO.UTF-8 or nb_NO.iso88591, but I'm guessing here)

* Was the file of a particular size?

Typical mp3 file sizes, 2-10MB I guess.

* Was the file a Windows .lnk file?

Probably not, most of them definitely not. It's unlikely that there were any such files, but I'm not 100% sure.

* What other symptoms did you notice?

Nothing special.