Problem with $DISPLAY

Dave Horsfall dave at horsfall.org
Fri Oct 17 11:40:17 PDT 2014


On Fri, 17 Oct 2014, René J.V. Bertin wrote:

> > Correct, but if you're (a) formatting a disk and (b) choosing HFSX+ 
> > (case-sensitive HFS+), you know what's up. New Macs are already set up 
> > with HFS+, and I don't want anyone with the default filesystem to 
> > accidentally trash anything because they think they can swap case with 
> > reckless abandon.
> 
> It's been a while since I checked, but isn't it possible to go from the 
> one to the other by swapping a switch with the right tool, without 
> needing to reformat the whole partition? (As to HFSX vs HFS: I don't 
> think that's what defines case-sensitivity, but the HFSX term has been 
> used a little to carelessly to be sure).

If there is then this Macoid would dearly love to know how.  Coming from a 
40-year Unix background I was horrified when I discovered that the 
filesystem was, err, transparently case-insensitive, is the best way that 
I can put it...  Case is preserved, but the kernel (presumably namei() or
its equivalent) doesn't care; much fun and games ensued with "ls -f" which
I use as a forensic tool.  Oddly enough, devices are case-sensitive:

davehorsmacbook# ls -l /dev/NULL
ls: /dev/NULL: No such file or directory
davehorsmacbook# ls -ld /DEV
dr-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  4406 Oct 12 15:17 /DEV

> > The only exception is the Mac, and it's a little late changing it 
> > after the installation with which it came.

Indeed...  Especially when there was no prior warning about it.

> Not if it can be done like journaling (i.e. just toggle a switch) but 
> there used to be a time when it was unwise to have a case-sensitive boot 
> partition. I still stick to that because I probably still have apps 
> around that assuming they're on a case-insensitive fs. (IIRC Adobe apps 
> were good at that.) However, all my other (non {FAT,exFat,NTFS} volumes 
> are case-sensitive, because that's the way things ought to be for me.

Case-sensitivity is the only way to go; this is POSIX, not MS-DOS.

-- 
Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU)
http://www.horsfall.org/spam.html


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