Many thanks for the quick replies (including the info about #409516).
I've now tried the following vfat mount options:
(0) defaults (as generated by my oldish installer (weekly build 20070115))
(1) defaults,codepage=437 (this should be the default, so should be the same)
(2) defaults,codepage=850
(3) defaults,iocharset=UTF-8
(4) defaults,iocharset=UTF8 (just a hunch, but no good)
(5) defaults,utf8 (see mount(8) in the section 'Mount options for vfat')
Option (5) works for me; the others don't (details below).
Frans Pop wrote:
> Anyway, I doubt this would be an installer issue as there is no real way
> for the installer to determine the correct settings.
Peter Green wrote:
> if so then imo this option should be set by the installer when generating
> fstab as afaict newly installed debian systems are completely utf-8 based
> nowadays.
Okay, if vfat option 'utf8' is the solution, perhaps the installer *should*
set it when generating fstab? It doesn't seem so variable (and difficult to
determine) as different codepage/iocharset things might have been.
It would be nice if this stuff worked 'out of the box'. Much better than just
a comment in the release notes. (Unless it does work with newer builds? I
should repeat that this is with the 20070115 build.) I still don't understand
why I don't observe this problem on the box that I upgraded from sarge, as if
the upgrade is incomplete somehow. Is the reason that I haven't 'upgraded'
the locale settings to utf-8? Or something deeper?
Anyway, details on the tests:
(0),(1),(2) the same problems as in the original report, for example:
debian:~$ mount | grep hda1
/dev/hda1 on /windows type vfat (rw,codepage=850)
debian:~$ find /windows/windows/SendTo/ | wc
wc: standard input:2: Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character
7 17 315
(3),(4) the mount fails, for example:
debian:/etc# mount /windows/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
debian:/etc# dmesg | tail -2
Unable to load NLS charset UTF-8
FAT: IO charset UTF-8 not found
(5) success! so far, anyway... for example:
debian:/etc# mount | grep hda1
/dev/hda1 on /windows type vfat (rw,utf8)
debian:~$ find /windows/windows/SendTo/
/windows/windows/SendTo/
/windows/windows/SendTo/3½ Floppy (A).lnk
[...]
debian:~$ find /windows/windows/SendTo/ | wc
7 17 316
debian:~$ find /windows/windows/Favorites/ | grep Hifisound
/windows/windows/Favorites/Hifisound der Lautsprecher Selbstbau Spezialist
aus Münster.url
(final example: mkisofs now works; previously it aborted)
debian:~$ mkisofs -r -J -o cdtest.iso /windows/windows/Favorites
I: -input-charset not specified, using utf-8 (detected in locale settings)
[...]
Total rockridge attributes bytes: 20387
Total directory bytes: 14336
Path table size(bytes): 86
Max brk space used 22000
387 extents written (0 MB)
