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  • DOSBOX-X and lowercase filenames

    From Mike Powell@1:2320/105 to All on Sat Mar 22 14:05:56 2025
    Good afternoon,
    I am running a DOS BBS system under DOSBOX-X. When the DOS tosser (squish) creates the *.flo files, it is writing the filename out to the flo in lowercase. However, DOSBOX-X is saving the mail archives to the host OS system (linux) in UPPERCASE.

    When binkd (on linux) tries an action on the flo file, it does not find the matching dataset name and deletes the flo file without sending the mail.

    I have done some research and it sounds like the DOSBOX dev team believes that writing in UPPERCASE is not a bug because DOS w/o LFN support only supports UPPERCASE.

    I have tried turning on LFN support and changing a couple of other settings but none of them cause DOSBOX-X to write the dataset names to the host OS system in lowercase.

    Does anyone know if there is a trick to get DOSBOX-X to write files to linux with lowercase names?

    Is there a way to use the "ftrans" in the binkd.cfg file to cause it to ignore the filename case that it finds in the flo files?

    Couple of quick notes... I am using DOSBOX-X over dosemu because the BBS software developer does not support dosemu because he doesn't use linux, and I am using squish because the BBS software FTN "shim" program doesn't work with crashmail.

    Thanks!

    $$
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (1:2320/105)
  • From Nigel Reed@1:124/5016 to All on Sat Mar 22 16:27:25 2025
    On Sat, 22 Mar 2025 14:05:56 -0500
    "Mike Powell" (1:2320/105) <Mike.Powell@f105.n2320.z1.fidonet> wrote:

    Good afternoon,
    I am running a DOS BBS system under DOSBOX-X. When the DOS tosser
    (squish) creates the *.flo files, it is writing the filename out to
    the flo in lowercase. However, DOSBOX-X is saving the mail archives
    to the host OS system (linux) in UPPERCASE.

    When binkd (on linux) tries an action on the flo file, it does not
    find the matching dataset name and deletes the flo file without
    sending the mail.

    I have done some research and it sounds like the DOSBOX dev team
    believes that writing in UPPERCASE is not a bug because DOS w/o LFN
    support only supports UPPERCASE.

    I have tried turning on LFN support and changing a couple of other
    settings but none of them cause DOSBOX-X to write the dataset names
    to the host OS system in lowercase.

    Does anyone know if there is a trick to get DOSBOX-X to write files
    to linux with lowercase names?

    Is there a way to use the "ftrans" in the binkd.cfg file to cause it
    to ignore the filename case that it finds in the flo files?

    Couple of quick notes... I am using DOSBOX-X over dosemu because the
    BBS software developer does not support dosemu because he doesn't use
    linux, and I am using squish because the BBS software FTN "shim"
    program doesn't work with crashmail.

    Thanks!

    $$
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (1:2320/105)

    Have you tried

    [dosbox]
    lower_case_filesystem = true

    in your dosbox-x.conf file?
    --
    End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
    telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23
    --- SBBSecho 3.24-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (1:124/5016)
  • From Oli@2:280/464.47 to Mike Powell on Tue Mar 25 10:11:03 2025
    Mike wrote (2025-03-24):

    I think I did have that problem once and the way I got around it was to
    create a vfat filesystem for that directory.

    That is another idea worth trying.

    There are other filesystems that are or can be mounted case-insensitive too: exFAT, NTFS, JFS, XFS, ext4, f2fs, zfs.

    ext4 and f2fs is a bit complicated. NTFS can be mounted with mount.lowntfs-3g. I think the easiest ones are vfat, exfat, jfs and zfs. I just tried jfs and zfs and it seems to work fine. Just in case you want to use a more sophisticated (journaled) filesystem than vfat/exfat.

    truncate -s 256M /tmp/jfs.img
    mkfs.jfs -O /tmp/jfs.img
    mount /tmp/jfs.img /mnt

    truncate -s 256M /tmp/zfs.img
    zpool create testpool /tmp/zfs.img
    zfs create -o casesensitivity=insensitive testpool/outbound

    You could also use Squish on Linux.

    ---
    * Origin: No REPLY kludge - no reply (2:280/464.47)
  • From Mike Powell@1:2320/105 to All on Wed Mar 26 09:25:38 2025
    Mounting a volume that should support lfn, turning on lfn, setting DOS version to 7.10, etc., didn't help. DOSBOX-X seems pretty determined to write out UPPERCASE 8.3 filenames to the host OS even when I use greater-than 8 characters.

    I decided to switch one node back to dosemu and let it handle all the ftn tossing events. That, in the long run, is probably a lot less headache. ;)

    Thanks!
    Mike

    $$
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (1:2320/105)