Hierarchical File System and Wine

cabal · Post by **cabal** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 4:57 pm

While trying to dodge issues with case-sensitivity, I stumbled on a somewhat effective solution: the old Mac OS Hierarchical File System (HFS). HFS is case insensitive and supports symlinks, making it very useful for Wine. The drawbacks are that it's slow compared to modern file systems, the max file size is 2GB and filenames are limited to 31 bytes. It will likely have problems running programs that frequently access the HDD and obviously won't run anything with a file larger than 2GB, but many older programs seem to work well. In particular, I found it useful for running games that I use a lot of mods with which don't necessarily use the same capitalization, such as Morrowind and Oblivion. HFS only has limited support in most distros by default, largely remaining as legacy support, but tools like hfsprogs add more functionality.

CIOPFS is probably a much better option for those that know how to use it, but the lack of documentation for it put me off. Anyway, I hope somebody finds this information to be helpful.

Charles Davis · Post by **Charles Davis** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 7:52 pm

On Dec 19, 2011, at 2:57 PM, cabal wrote:

While trying to dodge issues with case-sensitivity, I stumbled on a somewhat effective solution: the old Mac OS Hierarchical File System (HFS). HFS is case insensitive and supports symlinks, making it very useful for Wine. The drawbacks are that it's slow compared to modern file systems, the max file size is 2GB and filenames are limited to 31 bytes.

That is why Apple replaced it with HFS+. HFS+ has all the advantages of the old HFS, but none of the drawbacks (except maybe the slowness). Just so you know, HFS+ happens to be the native file system of Mac OS X. (Indeed, it won't run with anything else!) I do believe Linux also has drivers built-in for HFS+.

Chip

cabal · Post by **cabal** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 10:52 pm

Yes, but HFS+ is case sensitive, which defeats the purpose.

ryan woodsmall · Post by **ryan woodsmall** » Mon Dec 19, 2011 10:57 pm

Yes, but HFS+ is case sensitive, which defeats the purpose.

HFS+ can be case sensitive or case insensitive (aka HFSX). By default, OS X system volumes are case-preserving/case-insensitive. You generally need to specify case insensitive for new filesystems, and I don't believe booting OS X from a case sensitive volume is supported though it may work. -r

cabal · Post by **cabal** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 1:45 am

Interesting. I'll have to check it out tomorrow since it's getting late here and I'll need to dig up an old drive to test. I'm not really sure how flexible hfsprogs is but hopefully this works. Thanks.