Case insensitive partition under Linux

Question

Is there a way to format and use a partition under Linux which is case-insensitive?

I know of vfat, but was hoping I could find some alternatives. Any suggestions?

cularis · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-30 07:46:18Z

4

JFS with Option -O:

CIOPFS (case insensitive on purpose file system):

answered May 30, 2011 at 7:46

cularis

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u1686_grawity · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-30 13:11:13Z

3

You can create case insensitive filesystems with ZFS:

# zfs create -o casesensitivity=insensitive filesystem

u1686_grawity

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answered May 30, 2011 at 9:03

jlliagre

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ZFS is distributed with Sun CDDL license, which is incompatible with GPL license used by Linux Kernel. So, ZFS cannot be (legally) used with Linux. The only option is to use ZFS with filesystem in userspace (zfs-fuse).
– Vinay
May 31, 2011 at 8:51
1

ZFS on fuse is quite usable. I'm sharing pools between ubuntu and Solaris with no issues. There are also native ZFS projects: zfsonlinux.org github.com/zfs-linux
– jlliagre
May 31, 2011 at 12:56
1

this is probably the best solution. As of now ZFS has been distributed with Ubuntu for years
– phuclv
Mar 29, 2022 at 0:36

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phuclv · Accepted Answer · 2022-04-10 04:47:47Z

Gabriel Krisman Bertazi (who is the author of the case-insentive feature in ext4) wrote the blog Using the Linux kernel's Case-insensitive feature in Ext4. In short you need to enable the casefold property
```
mkfs -t ext4 -O casefold /dev/vda
```
For existing filesystems:
```
tune2fs -O casefold /dev/sda1
```
This doesn't automatically make the whole filesystem case-insensitive – each directory has to be marked so individually:
```
chattr +F ~/.wine
```
F2FS also supports case-insensitive name lookups via the casefold option
```
mkfs.f2fs -O casefold /dev/hda
```
XFS supports case-insensitive ASCII file names through the version=ci option
```
mkfs.xfs -f -n version=ci /dev/sda
```

3 Answers 3