8.3.1 client code page

The character sets on Windows platforms hark back to the original concept of a code page. These code pages are used by DOS and Windows clients to determine rules for mapping lowercase letters to uppercase letters. Samba can be instructed to use a variety of code pages through the use of the global client code page option in order to match the corresponding code page in use on the client. This option loads a code-page definition file, and can take the values specified in Table 8.4.

You can set the client code page as follows:

[global]
	client code page = 852

The default value of this option is 850. You can use the make_smbcodepage tool that comes with Samba (by default in /usr/local/samba/bin ) to create your own SMB code pages, in the event that those listed earlier are not sufficient.

8.3.2 character set

The global character set option can be used to convert filenames offered through a DOS code page (see the previous section, Section 8.3.1, client code page") to equivalents that can be represented by Unix character sets other than those in the United States. For example, if you want to convert the Western European MS-DOS character set on the client to a Western European Unix character set on the server, you can use the following in your configuration file:

[global]
	client code page = 850
	character set = ISO8859-1

Note that you must include a client code page option to specify the character set from which you are converting. The valid character sets (and their matching code pages) that Samba 2.0 accepts are listed in Table 8.5:

Normally, the character set option is disabled completely.

8.3.3 coding system

The coding system option is similar to the character set option. However, its purpose is to determine how to convert a Japanese Shift JIS code page into an appropriate Unix character set. In order to use this option, the client code page option described previously must be set to page 932. The valid coding systems that Samba 2.0 accepts are listed in Table 8.6.

8.3.4 valid chars

The valid chars option is an older Samba feature that will add individual characters to a code page. However, this option is being phased out in favor of more modern coding systems. You can use this option as follows:

valid chars = Î
valid chars = 0450:0420 0x0A20:0x0A00
valid chars = A:a

Each of the characters in the list specified should be separated by spaces. If there is a colon between two characters or their numerical equivalents, the data to the left of the colon is considered an uppercase character, while the data to the right is considered the lowercase character. You can represent characters both by literals (if you can type them) and by octal, hexidecimal, or decimal Unicode equivalents.

We recommend against using this option. Instead, go with one of the standard code pages listed earlier in this section. If you do use this option, however, it must be listed after the client code page to which you wish to add the character. Otherwise, the characters will not be added.