03-14-2005
Unix History Question: Why are filenames/dirnames case sentsitive in Unix?
I tried looking for the answer online and came up with only a few semi-answers as to why file and directory names are case sensitive in Unix. Right off the bat, I'll say this doesn't bother me. But I run into tons of Windows and OpenVMS admins in my day job who go batty when they have to deal with case sensitivity and I hate not really having a good answer for them. The best answer I can give them is that it allows for more filenames in the namespace, but they usually just grunt and reply, "yeah, but who cares". Knowing that Unix seems to have been refined into a really well thought out OS over the decades, I'm sure there must be a reason why case sensitivity was kept (other than legacy compatibility) instead of moving to a case insensitive naming convention. Any gurus out there have any good answers I can give them besides, "You'll get nothing and like it too!!" ;P
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
hdapsd
HDAPSD(8) hdapsd HDAPSD(8)
NAME
hdapsd - park the drive in case of an emergency
SYNOPSIS
hdapsd [-f|-d <device>|-s <sensitivity>|-a|-v|-b|-p|-t|-y|-l|-V|-h]
OPTIONS
-d --device=<device>
<device> is likely to be hda or sda. Can be given multiple times to protect multiple devices.
-f --force
Force unloading heads, even if kernel thinks different (on pre ATA7 drives). This only works when adding devices by hand (-d).
-s --sensitivity=<sensitivity>
How sensitive hdapsd should be to movements. Defaults to 15, higher values mean less sensitive.
-a --adaptive
Adaptive threshold (automatic increase when the built-in keyboard/mouse are used).
-v --verbose
Get verbose statistics.
-b --background
Run the process in the background.
-p --pidfile[=<pidfile>]
Create a pid file when running in background. If <pidfile> is not specified, it's set to /var/run/hdapsd.pid.
-t --dry-run
Don't actually park the drive.
-y --poll-sysfs
Force use of sysfs interface to accelerometer.
-l --syslog
Log to syslog instead of stdout/stderr.
-V --version
Display version information and exit.
-h --help
Display help and exit.
You can send SIGUSR1 to deactivate hdapsd for 8 seconds.
hdapsd 20090401 2009-04-01 HDAPSD(8)