Arch Linux

kumala

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 22

How to change my EFI directory name from lower case to upper case?

I want to update my laptop firmware using fwupd.

In the wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fwupd), it says:

Warning: The 'EFI' directory MUST be in all upper-case. If you used lower-case, fwupd may detect the esp as esp/efi/ instead and would start looking for esp/efi/EFI/

My EFI directory is /boot/efi, in lower case.
I want to change it to upper case in order to follow the instructions in the wiki. But I'm afraid I'm not conscious of all the consequences it could have. Will it affect the bootloader (I use Grub)? Or anything else in the system?

What should I do after switching the EFI directory to upper case? Should I update any configuration? Anything pointing to it?

Thanks.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,347

Re: How to change my EFI directory name from lower case to upper case?

It should not have any consequences, as the FAT file system the ESP is on is not actually case sensitive (the "case sensitivity" would be a specialty of the vfat driver of linux, but not necessary for any other users) and relevant navigation paths should still be valid. If you want to be safe regenerate your GRUB entry/config after changing case (or rather after updating, there's a high likelyhood you'll have to do that anyway). Make sure you have a live disk available.

Also is that actually your EFI directory and not the mount point of the ESP? That's a difference and I'd expect your path to the EFI directory to be /boot/efi/EFI if that is the case.

Last edited by V1del (2021-02-12 09:09:43)

kumala

Member

Registered: 2016-03-11

Posts: 22

Re: How to change my EFI directory name from lower case to upper case?

Thanks V1del for your insight. You are totally right, the path to my EFI directory is indeed /boot/efi/EFI. So I don't think I have to switch the case.
I will try to update my firmware now.