[clug] case-insensitive file system

[Michael Still]

David Gibson wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 10:44:56AM +1000, Michael Still wrote:

>>This sounds like a fairly trivial userspace filesystem task, although if 
>>you have serious performance requirements then that might not be the 
>>right answer. Are case sensitive clients also going to be using the 
>>filesystem, or just the case insensitive ones?
> 
> No, it's really not a trivial task in userspace.  The only way to do a
> case-insensitve lookup from userspace is list and scan the entire
> directory manually.  Ugly and slow.

For the case where the files could have been created by case sensitive 
clients then this is true. For example the Samba experience where I 
might have created case sensitive files in my home directory, and now 
want my Windows boxes to see them as case insensitive files.

However, for the case where the files are all created by a case 
insensitive client, and then used by that client then the solution is 
trivial. You can simply force all filenames to lower case before hitting 
the actual storage. Because the transform is consistently applied, it 
should all be good.

Mikal

-- 

Michael Still (mikal at stillhq.com) | "All my life I've had one dream,
http://www.stillhq.com            |  to achieve my many goals"
UTC + 10                          |    -- Homer Simpson