[cifs-protocol] [REG:119021819676760] Group Policy GPT.INI file encoding

Thu Mar 21 00:08:22 UTC 2019

Hi Garming:
Windows uses ANSI (extended-ASCII) to encode the GPT.INI file. This is why you see the E9 for accented e in the example you sent me.
All the string in recent versions of Windows are in Unicode. When time comes to write it into the GPT.INI file, windows converts Unicode to ANSI based on whatever code page is loaded. For English and most Latin languages it is Windows-1252 code page.
At the time of group policy update, Windows client does not perform any checks for encoding and expects GPT.INI to be encoded in ANSI characters.

The algorithm to convert Uincode to ANSI is documented in MS-UCODEREF in section “3.1.5.1.1.2 Pseudocode for Mapping a UTF-16 String to a Codepage String”

I’ll file a bug against the MS-GPOL to fix the issue about UTF-8.

Please let me know if this does not answer your question.

Regards,
Obaid Farooqi
Escalation Engineer | Microsoft

Exceeding your expectations is my highest priority.  If you would like to provide feedback on your case you may contact my manager at ramagane at Microsoft dot com

From: Obaid Farooqi
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 4:36 PM
To: Garming Sam <garming at catalyst.net.nz>
Cc: cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org; MSSolve Case Email <casemail at microsoft.com>; Denis CARDON <dcardon at tranquil.it>
Subject: RE: [cifs-protocol] [REG:119021819676760] Group Policy GPT.INI file encoding

Hi Garming:
You guess seems to spot on because the string in French is exact translation of “New Group Policy Object”.

I am close to resolution on this issue and will be in touch soon with my answer.

Obaid Farooqi
Escalation Engineer | Microsoft

From: Garming Sam <garming at catalyst.net.nz<mailto:garming at catalyst.net.nz>>
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2019 4:28 PM
To: Obaid Farooqi <obaidf at microsoft.com<mailto:obaidf at microsoft.com>>
Cc: cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org<mailto:cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org>; MSSolve Case Email <casemail at microsoft.com<mailto:casemail at microsoft.com>>; Denis CARDON <dcardon at tranquil.it<mailto:dcardon at tranquil.it>>
Subject: Re: [cifs-protocol] [REG:119021819676760] Group Policy GPT.INI file encoding

Hi,

Only Denis knows the exact details, but I expect that all he did was to have a French version of Windows, installed RSAT, opened the group policy editor and created a new GPO of that name (and copied the resulting file from the sysvol).

Cheers,

Garming
On 7/03/19 10:13 AM, Obaid Farooqi wrote:
Hi Garming:
Thanks for the file.
Is it possible to list the steps that were used to create this file?

Regards,
Obaid Farooqi
Escalation Engineer | Microsoft

Exceeding your expectations is my highest priority.  If you would like to provide feedback on your case you may contact my manager at ramagane at Microsoft dot com

From: Garming Sam <garming at catalyst.net.nz><mailto:garming at catalyst.net.nz>
Sent: Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:56 PM
To: Obaid Farooqi <obaidf at microsoft.com><mailto:obaidf at microsoft.com>
Cc: cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org<mailto:cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org>; MSSolve Case Email <casemail at microsoft.com><mailto:casemail at microsoft.com>; Denis CARDON <dcardon at tranquil.it><mailto:dcardon at tranquil.it>
Subject: Re: [cifs-protocol] [REG:119021819676760] Group Policy GPT.INI file encoding

I've been made aware that mail clients can mess with encodings, so here's the previous file zipped as well.

Cheers,

Garming
On 5/03/19 10:45 AM, Garming Sam via cifs-protocol wrote:

Hi,

Attached is an example from Denis. (It seems to read 'New Group Policy

Object', so it looks like it even might be broken on the default

generated name)

The accented e appears to be at position E9 in the Latin-1 code page,

while the UTF-8 representation is supposed to be two bytes, C3 A9.

Cheers,

Garming

On 1/03/19 6:18 AM, Obaid Farooqi wrote:

Hi Garming:

Can you please send me a gpt.ini that has non-UTF8 characters?

-----Original Message-----

From: Obaid Farooqi

Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2019 3:01 PM

To: Garming Sam <garming at catalyst.net.nz><mailto:garming at catalyst.net.nz>

Cc: MSSolve Case Email <casemail at microsoft.com><mailto:casemail at microsoft.com>; cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org<mailto:cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org>; Denis CARDON <dcardon at tranquil.it><mailto:dcardon at tranquil.it>

Subject: RE: [REG:119021819676760] Group Policy GPT.INI file encoding

Hi Garming:

I'll help you with this issue and will be in touch as soon as I have an answer.

Regards,

Obaid Farooqi

Escalation Engineer | Microsoft

-----Original Message-----

From: "Edgar Olougouna" <edgaro at microsoft.com><mailto:edgaro at microsoft.com>

Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2019 8:43 PM

To: "Garming Sam" <garming at catalyst.net.nz><mailto:garming at catalyst.net.nz>

Cc: "MSSolve Case Email" <casemail at microsoft.com><mailto:casemail at microsoft.com>; "cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org"<mailto:cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org> <cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org><mailto:cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org>; "Denis CARDON" <dcardon at tranquil.it><mailto:dcardon at tranquil.it>

Subject: [REG:119021819676760] Group Policy GPT.INI file encoding

Hello Garming, Denis,

Glad to hear from you Denis. Thank you Garming for reaching out.

One of our team members will look into this and follow-up soon.

Thanks,

Edgar

-----Original Message-----

From: Garming Sam <garming at catalyst.net.nz><mailto:garming at catalyst.net.nz>

Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2019 4:42 PM

To: Interoperability Documentation Help <dochelp at microsoft.com><mailto:dochelp at microsoft.com>

Cc: cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org<mailto:cifs-protocol at lists.samba.org>; Denis CARDON <dcardon at tranquil.it><mailto:dcardon at tranquil.it>

Subject: Group Policy GPT.INI file encoding

Hi,

According to Denis, cc'd here, using a French RSAT appears to be

writing GPT.INI files which are not UTF-8, but instead using ISO-8859 to

represent accented characters (in the display name for a GPO).

[MS-GPOL] 2.2.4 GPO Search

https://nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmsdn.

microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Flibrary%2Fcc232507.aspx&data=02%7C01%7C%7C6e1b1f

a5c69d4f39b07008d6955b9580%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C

636860617932917342&sdata=y21TJvHpxyDDeE5nHJW8j1PL2Sk46BWe6lj%2FwjLQkCM%3

D&reserved=0

"The gpt.ini file MUST be encoded in UTF-8..."

According the the documentation, it is required to be UTF-8, so

something doesn't quite add up here. Denis can probably reconfirm

himself, but any assistance reproducing or confirming this behaviour

would be appreciated. Assuming this is an issue, it's unclear what the

effect of other locales is.

Cheers,

Garming

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