I’m not too sure what the size limits of FAT16 are, I haven’t used it in over 10 years. I just know it’s lacking in long filename support and that what is supported is shoddy at best. But a format shouuld fix your issue, and if not, it’s a bad card.
@mngrif wrote:
I’m not too sure what the size limits of FAT16 are, I haven’t used it in over 10 years. I just know it’s lacking in long filename support and that what is supported is shoddy at best.
FAT16 normally has no long filename support, but the same goes for FAT32. There is the “vFAT” extension, that enables both FAT16 and FAT32 to handle long filenames. Windows 95A had no FAT32 support, all later versions of Windows 95 could read/write FAT32, but could not create a FAT32 filesystem. Still, all Windows 95 versions could definately handle long filenames. Even the FAT12 formatted floppy disks could have long filenames.
@calv wrote:
@mngrif wrote:
I’m not too sure what the size limits of FAT16 are, I haven’t used it in over 10 years. I just know it’s lacking in long filename support and that what is supported is shoddy at best.
FAT16 normally has no long filename support, but the same goes for FAT32. There is the “vFAT” extension, that enables both FAT16 and FAT32 to handle long filenames. Windows 95A had no FAT32 support, all later versions of Windows 95 could read/write FAT32, but could not create a FAT32 filesystem. Still, all Windows 95 versions could definately handle long filenames. Even the FAT12 formatted floppy disks could have long filenames.
Thanks for clarification. It should be clear now that VFAT is not a filesystem but an extension to FAT filesystems. I’d like to recommend the english or (even mode specific) german wikipedia articles for further readings.
To the OP: Did you check the filesystem of your card to veryfy it is ok? Have you tried different mount options?
Works fine with any filesystem outside of FAT. I think it’s just FAT weirdness.
@gdanko wrote:
Works fine with any filesystem outside of FAT. I think it’s just FAT weirdness.
Unfortunately we have to stick to FAT/VFAT here. But you should not give up … 
There are many potential pitfalls in using VFAT on Linux and there are different ways of handling upper/lower case filenames on different M$ windows versions too! Every time you write and read on VFAT with two different systems (either operating system, kernel, codepage, language settings etc.) you must take special care if you aim for compatibility. Just for the curious: you have a similar behaviour if you write and read to any ext[234] partition with two different locale settings, eg. UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1. The hard way for Linux to handle VFAT essentially is because you need to satisfy both ways
VFAT(FAT using 8.3 limited ASCII + LFN using UTF16) <====> EXT[234] on any locale (UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, …)
If you copy files both ways between your linux box and the Fuze (and external sdhc card used with it) and want the Fuze display names as you see them on your linux box then I would recommend the following procedure:
- make sure the Fuze’s internal flash storage is formatted by the player itself (not by windows or linux)
- apply the latest firmware update
- make sure the vfat filesystem on your sdhc card is not corrupt and supports long filenames (LFN) by using fsck.vfat, if not you could try to repair the filesystem or just create a new one (mkfs.vfat -F32 devname)
- if and only if 1-3 are fine check and play with your current locale settings and mount options
- hardwire your best findings (e.g. if they differ from automounter defaults)
In your case the automounter chooses some mount option according to the information it retrieves from hal. Anything not handled by hal will use kernel compile defaults. These do vary a lot from one kernel version to the next and from one release of a given distribution to the next. Again, if you would write a filename to any VFAT partition and read it back later on another maybe updated release of your distribution then there is no guarantee the filenames would show up as before!
What can you do? As I told you in number 4: try by yourself and take full control of locale settings and mount options. Note that if you change anything with respect to these two settings then you have to
- newly copy your test files to the VFAT
- unmount the partition
- view the filenames on the Fuze
- connect the Fuze to the PC
- mount the partition with the very same options
- read the filenames with the very same locale settings
If you want to go this way I’ll try my best to help you any further. Good luck!
