german umlaute win95 client vs. Linux-Samba file server

[Steve Langasek]

On Fri, 30 Apr 1999 Ralf Christmann wrote:

> I've a problem known especially to german speaking users (and other
> nationalities using special characters).
> I'm using Samba 1.9.18 and a linux 2.0.35 kernel
> I want to create a directory or file with a name containing german umlaute
> from the win95 client 
> so that I can see it on the linux machine with the equal characters I've
> used under win95. 
> On the win95 machine the new added file (or directory) with this special
> characters seems to be good, but when I'm looking
> on the linux machine I've file or dir names with questionmarks instead of
> the special characters??? 

> I know about valid chars, character set and client code page. I've tried a
> lot but nothing seems to help.
> I've also tried a solution with validchr.exe program under dos like it is
> proposed in the docs from tino at augburg...
> Also I've changed export LC_ALL=de_DE in the bash. But no success.
> Did somebody (especially users from switzerland or germany) get rid of the
> problem.
> Or could somebody else help?

This is a problem on the Linux end.  This is usually covered in the Linux
national language HOWTOs, but for some reason the German HOWTO doesn't mention
'ls'.

To get 'ls' to display the characters correctly, you should pass it the -N
option:

$ touch blée
$ ls blée
bl?e
$ls -N blée
blée

There is a lot besides 'export LC_ALL=de_DE' involved in properly
internationalizing a Linux system, and I recommend reading the German HOWTO,
if you haven't already done so.

-Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer