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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!

    $$
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  • 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
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    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (1:124/5016)
  • From Tommi Koivula@2:221/1 to Mike Powell on Sun Mar 23 08:38:18 2025
    On 22.03.2025 19:05, Mike Powell wrote:

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

    You could use fileboxes to store outbound mail. Binkd can send aLL fILeS from the fileboxes.

    I don't know if your tosser supports fileboxes.

    'Tommi

    ---
    * Origin: smapinntpd/lnx (2:221/1.0)
  • From Oli@2:280/464.47 to Tommi Koivula on Sun Mar 23 16:18:41 2025
    Tommi wrote (2025-03-23):

    You could use fileboxes to store outbound mail. Binkd can send aLL fILeS from the fileboxes.

    I don't know if your tosser supports fileboxes.

    Squish does not support fileboxes.

    ---
    * Origin: No REPLY kludge - no reply (2:280/464.47)
  • From Mike Powell@1:2320/105 to TOMMI KOIVULA on Sun Mar 23 10:40:00 2025
    Does anyone know if there is a trick to get DOSBOX-X to write files to linux with lowercase names?

    You could use fileboxes to store outbound mail. Binkd can send aLL fILeS from the fileboxes.

    I don't know if your tosser supports fileboxes.

    I don't know that DOS SQUISH does, but I think I might have another utility that would. That is not a bad idea, I will look into that.

    I am also considering adding node that runs under dosemu as, IIRC, the
    problem wasn't a problem when I used it.

    Mike


    * SLMR 2.1a * Spelling is a sober man's game
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  • From Mike Powell@1:2320/105 to NIGEL REED on Sun Mar 23 10:27:00 2025
    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.

    Have you tried

    [dosbox]
    lower_case_filesystem = true

    in your dosbox-x.conf file?

    I checked the "universal" conf file and didn't see that setting. I have now tried it. Files written are still all in UPPERCASE on the host os.

    Mike

    * SLMR 2.1a * 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely small values of 5.
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    * Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (1:2320/105)
  • From Nigel Reed@1:124/5016 to Mike Powell on Sun Mar 23 18:16:51 2025
    Re: Re: DOSBOX-X and lowercas
    By: Mike Powell to NIGEL REED on Sun Mar 23 2025 10:27:00

    I checked the "universal" conf file and didn't see that setting. I have now tried it. Files written are still all in UPPERCASE on the host os.

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

    You can use dd to create a small file and then format it as vfat, mount it to /mnt and copy your files over, and unmount and remount to the new location and add it to fstab. This is one way I found around the issue, but I'm sure sure it's going to help in your case.

    You could create a symlink from the lower to upper case name if you know what it's going to be in advance or after the dos program has run? I'd need to know more about how it's used I guess.
    --- SBBSecho 3.24-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (1:124/5016)
  • From Mike Powell@1:2320/105 to NIGEL REED on Mon Mar 24 08:31:00 2025
    I checked the "universal" conf file and didn't see that setting. I have now
    tried it. Files written are still all in UPPERCASE on the host os.

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

    You can use dd to create a small file and then format it as vfat, mount it to /mnt and copy your files over, and unmount and remount to the new location and
    add it to fstab. This is one way I found around the issue, but I'm sure sure it's going to help in your case.

    That is another idea worth trying.

    You could create a symlink from the lower to upper case name if you know what it's going to be in advance or after the dos program has run? I'd need to know
    more about how it's used I guess.

    In my case, the datasets in question are being created by an FTN tosser, squish. Squish, for some reason, writes the pathnames in the flo files in UPPERCASE, but is writing out the actual dataset names in the flo files in lowercase.

    When linux binkd reads the flo file, it cannot find the dataset because the case in the flo file (lower) doesn't match the case that DOSBOX-X has
    written out (UPPER).

    I am not sure if I would know for sure the names each time. I would also suspect that, after sending the dataset, binkd might delete the symlink it found that matched the proper case.


    * SLMR 2.1a * Arnold Layne, don't do it again!
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  • 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

    $$
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