On Tue, 10 Jun 2025 at 07:34, Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Jun 09, 2025 at 10:16:24AM -0400, Chuck Lever wrote: > > > Date: Wed May 21 16:50:46 2008 +1000 > > > > > > dcache: Add case-insensitive support d_ci_add() routine > > > > My memory must be quite faulty then. I remember there being significant > > controversy at the Park City LSF around some patches adding support for > > case insensitivity. But so be it -- I must not have paid terribly close > > attention due to lack of oxygen. > > Well, that is when the ext4 CI code landed, which added the unicode > normalization, and with that another whole bunch of issues. Well, no one likes the Han unification, and the mess the Unicode consortium made from that, But the Chinese are working on a replacement standard for Unicode, so that will be a lot of FUN =:-) > > > That being said no one ever intended any of these to be exported over > > > NFS, and I also question the sanity of anyone wanting to use case > > > insensitive file systems over NFS. > > > > My sense is that case insensitivity for NFS exports is for Windows-based > > clients > > I still question the sanity of anyone using a Windows NFS client in > general, but even more so on a case insensitive file system :) Well, if you want one and the same homedir on both Linux and Windows, then you have the option between the SMB/CIFS and the Windows NFSv4.2 driver (I'm not counting the Windows NFSv3 driver due lack of ACL support). Both, as of September 2025, work fine for us for production usage. > > Does it, for example, make sense for NFSD to query the file system > > on its case sensitivity when it prepares an NFSv3 PATHCONF response? > > Or perhaps only for NFSv4, since NFSv4 pretends to have some recognition > > of internationalized file names? > > Linus hates pathconf any anything like it with passion. Altough we > basically got it now with statx by tacking it onto a fast path > interface instead, which he now obviously also hates. But yes, nfsd > not beeing able to query lots of attributes, including actual important > ones is largely due to the lack of proper VFS interfaces. What does Linus recommend as an alternative to pathconf()? Also, AGAIN the question: Due lack of a VFS interface and the urgend use case of needing to export a case-insensitive filesystem via NFSv4.x, could we please get two /etc/exports options, one setting the case-insensitive boolean (true, false, get-default-from-fs) and one for case-preserving (true, false, get-default-from-fs)? So far LInux nfsd does the WRONG thing here, and exports even case-insensitive filesystems as case-sensitive. The Windows NFSv4.1 server does it correctly. Ced -- Cedric Blancher <cedric.blancher@xxxxxxxxx> [https://plus.google.com/u/0/+CedricBlancher/] Institute Pasteur
