Mount samba shares with utf8 encoding using cifs

[jwrede]

This is super, thanks for the help!

One thing you may want to include in the tutorial is the 'nobrl' option for users of OpenOffice that open files on CIFS shares. I have a NAS where I store my documents and kept getting errors when I would save my docs to the drive. I discovered that the errors were due to the fact that OpenOffice doesn't use CIFS-style mandatory byte range locks (http://www.swerdna.net.au/linhowtosambacifs.html), so adding the 'nobrl' option in my FSTAB stopped the errors.

My apologies if this was already posted in one of the 70 pages on this thread.

[dmizer]

This is super, thanks for the help!

One thing you may want to include in the tutorial is the 'nobrl' option for users of OpenOffice that open files on CIFS shares. I have a NAS where I store my documents and kept getting errors when I would save my docs to the drive. I discovered that the errors were due to the fact that OpenOffice doesn't use CIFS-style mandatory byte range locks (http://www.swerdna.net.au/linhowtosambacifs.html), so adding the 'nobrl' option in my FSTAB stopped the errors.

My apologies if this was already posted in one of the 70 pages on this thread.

Thanks for that. I've updated the howto with this information.

Edit:
One request. Can you please provide the exact text of the error you get when not using this option?

[leonthelion]

Hi dmizer,

Thanks for all your support here!

My first post:

Just installed xubuntu in VMWare in preparation to setting up a fileserver in our office. We have a mix of XP and Vista shares (yuck, I know!) and I'd like to be able to mount those and do some tests on filename compatibility, etc prior to building the real server.

Using your guide, I was able to mount one shared volume which is all in roman characters like so:

sudo mount -t cifs //YUKI/SharedDocs /mnt/sambashare -o username=something,password=something,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777

The charset flags did enable me to view the filenames in Japanese no worries.

BUT, I'm unable to mount a SMB share which is using Japanese characters in the share name itself. ie:

sudo mount -t cifs //YUKI/柿本 - 製作 /mnt/sambashare -o username=something,password=something,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777

Until I set up a new fileserver, there's no chance of having them rename their shares. Do you know, is this error coming from the console or the mount command or the SMB/CIF implementation?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Leon

[dmizer]

BUT, I'm unable to mount a SMB share which is using Japanese characters in the share name itself. ie:

sudo mount -t cifs //YUKI/柿本 - 製作 /mnt/sambashare -o username=something,password=something,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777

Until I set up a new fileserver, there's no chance of having them rename their shares. Do you know, is this error coming from the console or the mount command or the SMB/CIF implementation?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Leon

I recall having the same problem, but I'm not sure how I resolved it. I think this may work:

sudo mount -t cifs //YUKI/"柿本 - 製作" /mnt/sambashare -o username=something,password=something,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777

I don't have access to a Linux machine at the moment, but as soon as I get home I'll look into this.

The specs for CIFS and SAMBA indicate that anything other than ASCII characters are illegal for share names. That doesn't mean they can't be used, but there is always a chance for problems when doing so.

[leonthelion]

Worked like a charm, thanks!

I can see all the files inside the SMB share with their correct Japanese filenames.

Can copy to the xubuntu desktop no worries, but no progress indicators on file copy progress. Maybe I'm using a crappy file manager (first morning using Ubuntu and many years since playing with Linux desktop )

Cheers dmizer!

[dmizer]

That's fantastic! Glad we got you working.

No idea what to tell you about the progress indicators though, sorry. Xubuntu uses Thunar as it's file manager. It's really quite powerful considering how light it is. Do you have problems with the progress indicators when copying files locally? If not, it could be that you're having problems related to VMware. VMware networking can be tricky sometimes.

[Dareus]

hi, just one little question: in 8.04.1 my TimeCapsule (cifs share) was automounted after the network was up (knetworkmanager), now with intrepid that's not the case, i have to manually mount the device, do you know how to solve this issue, too?

[dmizer]

hi, just one little question: in 8.04.1 my TimeCapsule (cifs share) was automounted after the network was up (knetworkmanager), now with intrepid that's not the case, i have to manually mount the device, do you know how to solve this issue, too?

Sorry, I have not even looked at Intrepid yet. I would suggest asking in the Intrepid development area here: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=346

[Dareus]

thanks for your very useful guide, anyway

[dmizer]

thanks for your very useful guide, anyway

It's no problem.

Did you use this guide to mount your shares? You mentioned knetwork manager so I assumed you did not.