Unable to access files containing special characters (accents) on a SMB share

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0xFFFF Author

Level 1

8 points

Unable to access files containing special characters (accents) on a SMB share

I can't access some files on a SMB share.

Those files have one thing in common, that is they contain accented characters (àèéìòù).

I can't access them from finder, terminal, or other softwares.

It works fine when accessing them from a Windows 7 client.

How can I fix this issue?

Is there some SMB option to specify the UTF8 encoding?

In addition, when I create a file with such characters from my mac, the special character shows as ?? on a non-mac client.

SMB Client-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Dec 4, 2011 10:31 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

0xFFFF Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 10, 2011 9:37 AM in response to 0xFFFF

it turns out I had way more filenames with accented letters that worked well with MacOS X.

the difference is subtle: those OS X didn't like were like a "composition" of two character (sorry, I don't know the encoding details), that is a vowel and a unicode special character that modifies the previous char adding an accent.

I discovered this while renaming the files from a Windows client, by placing the cursor after "é" in "perché" and hitting backspace, it turned into "perche", and hitting backspace again deleted the "e", turning into "perch".

so I fixed those few invalid filenames.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,406 points

Dec 10, 2011 11:18 AM in response to 0xFFFF

Do I understand correctly that you were able to solve the problem by making sure that the file names on the SMB share used "decomposed" characters, such as e character plus combining acute accent character? If so, that must be related to the fact that the OS X file system requires this and can't handle the single character "composed" version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HFS_Plus

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Answer 3

0xFFFF Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 12, 2011 12:11 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom, it is the opposite:

decomposed characters didn't work [1].

switching to single char accented works.

[1] for the record, when I say do not work, I mean finder is able to list the filename properly, but when accessing the file with any program, it says it cannot find the file.

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Answer 4

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

118,406 points

Dec 12, 2011 2:57 PM in response to 0xFFFF

Thanks! Seems odd that it should behave that way...

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Answer 5

W2lkm2n

Level 1

0 points

Jul 30, 2014 12:59 PM in response to 0xFFFF

This solved my problem also! Thank you!

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