[clug] Windows filesystem weirdness "com1"

[David Gibson]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 02:35:07PM +1000, Antti.Roppola at brs.gov.au wrote:
> OK, this doesn't seem to be Linux related, but I found it curiously defficient
> and initially assumed it was Samba.
> 
> I am archiving a bunch of old dev stuff that includes copious
> numbers of files like "com1.menu, com2.menu".
> 
> When I pull them off the main server (Solaris with Samba) onto a
> Windows 2000 box the copy freaks out when it reaches "com1.menu".
> 
> A little experimentation replicates the same problem on my Linux boxen.
> 
> A little more experimentation shows that any file matching
> "com[1-9].* will not copy across, and I cannot create them on local
> disks. Ditto things like "lpt1.txt".
> 
> Anyone got any ideas on this seemingly arbitrary filename
> limitation? It looks like anything that could be a device name won't
> work. Especially annoying as I don't want to break the apps I am
> archiving (or roll them into a tar file). :-P

This rings a bell, now you come to mention it.  It is a device name
thing:  I think its essentially a consequence of DOS device names
being unqualified - there's no \dev\.  And ever since the DOS days, I
think <device name>*.* have essentially been reserved names.

-- 
David Gibson			| For every complex problem there is a
david at gibson.dropbear.id.au	| solution which is simple, neat and
				| wrong.
http://www.ozlabs.org/people/dgibson