Make a folder access case-insensitive on Linux ext4

Question

I'm trying to run a mod for a game on Linux and this mod reads files from a texture folder in a case insensitive manner (the mod runs on Windows as well).

I was wondering if there was a way to expose this folder to the game in a case insensitive way. Perhaps as some kind of symlink or a script that to_lower()s the file name access.

Would such a thing be possible?

The problem was also reported on steam, which you can look for more details: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1800248038/1640917196996115981/

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 19 '19 at 19:42

Starting with Linux 5.3, ext4 has support for case-insensitive directories. This work was contributed by Gabriel Bertazi of Collabora, and the work was funded by a company that ports Windows games to Linux. You'll want to use at e2fsprogs 1.45.4.

Linux 5.4 will likely be the next long-term stable kernel, so this feature should start showing up in distributions next year.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 05 '25 at 11:40

Your best bet is probably to mount an exfat or vfat filesystem which is case insensitive. You can either use a partition or maybe use a file as a block device, and format as exfat or vfat

You can probably (I've not tried it, but it makes sense) use https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/ciopfs/ to use FUSE to make a lowercase version of the filesystem - although this working will depend, I expect, on the program asking for lowercase files. It has the advantage of being an overlay, so not creating disk requirements.

Make a folder access case-insensitive on Linux ext4

2 Answers2