I found that every time when I plugged in my portable hard drive (VFAT), HAL used the mount option "shortname=lower" to mount the drive, as shown in /media/.hal-mtab. However this causes lots of problems of name conversion. It's better use "shortname=mixed". So I wrote a simple hal policy file called storage-policy.fdi:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="block.is_volume" bool="true">
<match key="volume.fsusage" string="filesystem">
<match key="volume.fstype" string="vfat">
<merge key="volume.policy.mount_option.shortname=" type="string">shortname=mixed</merge>
</match>
</match>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

I put it under /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/95userpolicy/ and restart haldaemon, and then I used lshal command to check if the new policy has been loaded:

[shrek@matrix ~]$ lshal | grep shortname
volume.mount.valid_options = {'ro', 'sync', 'dirsync', 'noatime', 'nodiratime', 'noexec', 'quiet', 'remount', 'exec', 'utf8', 'shortname=', 'codepage=', 'iocharset=', 'umask=', 'uid='} (string list)
volume.mount.valid_options = {'ro', 'sync', 'dirsync', 'noatime', 'nodiratime', 'noexec', 'quiet', 'remount', 'exec', 'utf8', 'shortname=', 'codepage=', 'iocharset=', 'umask=', 'dmask=', 'fmask=', 'uid='} (string list)
volume.policy.mount_option.shortname= = 'mixed' (string)

The last line shows that the customized policy worked. However the .hal-mtab in /media/ says the following:

[shrek@matrix policy]$ cat /media/.hal-mtab
/dev/sdb 500 0 vfat nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=lower,uid=500 /media/MYUSBDRIVE

I don't know why. Anyone can tell me where went wrong? Thanks a lot!

Hello,

I've the same problem in Fedora 7. In Fedora 6 there was automatic mounting of vfat with shortname=mixed ... but now, i'm in trouble after upgrade

I've done similar FDI file. In lshal everything looks OK (shortname=mixed) but in mount listing is still shortname=lower.

What else can I do with HAL to force it to mount vfat filesystems with shortname=mixed?

Thanks.

Try to install gnome-mount-nautilus-properties if you use Gnome.

Hi shreks, cgrim,

I have found that a script in /usr/share/hal... doesn't help, and gnome-mount-nautilus-properties seems to be unavailable -- for Ubuntu at least. In a posting on a different forum, someone mentioned the gnome configuration database. By changing the relevant entry I could make mount use shortname=lower, so you may be able to get the system to work to your liking as well. Start gconf-editor from an xterm. Click Edit -> Find or ctrl-F and search for vfat. It should find the key /system/storage/default_options/vfat/mount_options, so you may also go there directly. Edit the mount_options key by double-clicking and set shortname to your preference. The change takes effect immediately, so re-inserting the USB card reader was enough in my case.

Again, this is assuming you use Gnome, but it may be helpful to others as well.

Hi Thanks a lot for your help! Since I'm using Fedora 7, gnome-mount-nautilus-properties is available. Your gconf-editor approach is more generic and can be adapted to other platforms. I guess the problem occurs because of some changed made in Linux kernel modules "vfat" which uses the default mount options "shortname=lower". Therefore, in order to preserve exact file names, some settings must be made to change this default mount options, regardless of what desktop environment or linux distributions you use.