Browsing and code page.

Deniz Akkus Kanca deniz at arayan.com
Wed Jan 10 08:31:29 GMT 2001


I have a couple of stupid questions on the codepage issue:

A native US English Windows client with default codepage 437 shows
international characters correctly in Windows (my international case being
Turkish, I am specifically talking about characters not present in codepage
437). It will not display the same characters in DOS -- understandably since
its codepage is 437.  It seems to understand just fine, however,
windows-1254. Connecting to shares hosted on other NT machines, whether the
server uses codepage 437 or 857, again, it will display international
characters in the filenames correctly as long as you use a windows tool, not
DOS.

The problem is, samba works off the DOS codepage. That is my understanding.
Is that correct?  So, a windows client with codepage 437 connecting a samba
share expecting codepage 857 does not display Turkish characters correctly.
You need a Turkish windows client which has default page 857.

My stupid question is, what do the NT's use to communicate among each other?
Do they switch codepages dynamically? Do they use the windows-xxxx
codepages?  If so, do they tell each other what encoding to use? Can samba
be made to behave in the same fashion?

Deniz



----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher R. Hertel" <crh at nts.umn.edu>
To: "Jeremy Allison" <jeremy at valinux.com>
Cc: "Samba Technical" <samba-technical at samba.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 8:22 AM
Subject: Re: Browsing and code page.


> Jeremy,
>
> Is there an 'official' NetBIOS character set?
>
> It seems that CP437 is the one used when I try to enter extended
> characters on a W/95 machine.  This is true either in the DOS shell or the
> Computer Name field in Network Control Panel.  If I do the old
>   press <ALT>
>   enter 1 5 7 on the keypad
>   release <ALT>
> I always get a yen symbol, which is correct for CP437, but not others.
>
> Any info?
>
> Chris -)-----
>
> > "Christopher R. Hertel" wrote:
> > >
> > > Jeremy,
> > >
> > > Can you give some more high-level detail on this?  Does it affect
NetBIOS
> > > naming as well?
> >
> > Yes. All the libsmb/XXX functions are designed to take
> > UNIX codepage format (ISO-8859-X) and then will convert
> > to DOS character set (CP-850 etc.) for on the wire transport,
> > then convert any strings back to UNIX character set on
> > exit. If you don't do this then any extended characters
> > in the NetBIOS naming are screwed up. The Japanese Samba
> > users group tests this very thoroughly (as do I usually).
> >
> > With all this new code in libsmb we need to be very careful
> > to make sure this is not broken (it works in 2.0.7 and 2.2).
> >
> > > Point me to docs???
> >
> > The code is the doc :-).
> >
> > Jeremy.
> >
> > --
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> > Buying an operating system without source is like buying
> > a self-assembly Space Shuttle with no instructions.
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> >
>
>
> --
> Christopher R. Hertel -)-----                   University of Minnesota
> crh at nts.umn.edu              Networking and Telecommunications Services
>
>     Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them
>     with your hands...you choose them as your guides, and following
>     them you will reach your destiny.  --Carl Schultz
>
>






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