samba - Jan 2005 - chinese characters

Hi,

I am using SME server 6.0 which has samba preconfigured on it. We 
upgraded from MS Windows 2000 server.

I am using the server in China and so many of the users wish to create 
files with Chinese characters in their names.

File names with Chinese characters seem to cause all sorts of problems. 
They have trouble creating them, and files which are copied off backup 
(from the W2K system) seem to stop them from logging in (because they 
cannot be copied off the server).

Can someone point me at any resources for debugging this sort of problem?

I have been to the SME forums but they haven't been any help - the only 
thing was a mention of a couple of parameters ('character set' should be
commented out, and 'client code page' set to 936) in the smb.conf file 
(as per the man page).

Is there anything else I need to do? Is there anywhere that explains how 
this is supposed to work. How do I use the server with computers using 
different 'code pages', as reported by the dos command chcp?

Thanks for any help.

Max.

Hello again,

This is causing my users a lot of pain. Is SAMBA not supposed to work in 
China?

Is there a better place to ask this question? Did I not give enough 
information?

I am feeling the pressure to move back to MS Windows, but I'd rather not 
give MS any more money.

Please advise...

Max.

Max Waterman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am using SME server 6.0 which has samba preconfigured on it. We 
> upgraded from MS Windows 2000 server.
> 
> I am using the server in China and so many of the users wish to create 
> files with Chinese characters in their names.
> 
> File names with Chinese characters seem to cause all sorts of problems. 
> They have trouble creating them, and files which are copied off backup 
> (from the W2K system) seem to stop them from logging in (because they 
> cannot be copied off the server).
> 
> Can someone point me at any resources for debugging this sort of problem?
> 
> I have been to the SME forums but they haven't been any help - the only
> thing was a mention of a couple of parameters ('character set'
should be
> commented out, and 'client code page' set to 936) in the smb.conf
file
> (as per the man page).
> 
> Is there anything else I need to do? Is there anywhere that explains how 
> this is supposed to work. How do I use the server with computers using 
> different 'code pages', as reported by the dos command chcp?
> 
> Thanks for any help.
> 
> Max.

On 2005-01-11 at 10:48 +0800 Max Waterman sent off:
>This is causing my users a lot of pain. Is SAMBA not supposed to work in 
>China?
you should be using samba 3 and you should leave unix charset at 
default (utf8). Then you can create filenames whatever you want. You 
might need to convert existing filenames if you have those from your 
old unix charset to utf8 for example with convmv.

Bjoern

Thanks! Sounds like a plan to me :)

OK, I guess it just fits in nicely with my geek character to always 
upgrade to the latest s/w :D ... which I often have to fight with 
production servers :(

Max.

Bjoern JACKE wrote:
> On 2005-01-11 at 10:48 +0800 Max Waterman sent off:
> 
>> This is causing my users a lot of pain. Is SAMBA not supposed to work 
>> in China?
> 
> 
> you should be using samba 3 and you should leave unix charset at default 
> (utf8). Then you can create filenames whatever you want. You might need 
> to convert existing filenames if you have those from your old unix 
> charset to utf8 for example with convmv.
> 
> Bjoern