ntfs: Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character

[^rooker]

[PROBLEM]
System: Kubuntu Hardy

I wanted to copy stuff from one ntfs partition to another (external hard drive) , but all files and folders with umlauts (or other special characters in their names) couldn't be created.

In Konqueror I did not see the actual error, but the shell gave me this:

Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character

[SOLUTION]
Thanks to entries in forums, I found an FAQ entry on the ntfs-3g homepage about locale settings/problems.

My system was set to "en_US.UTF-8", so I remounted the already mounted target ntfs partition with the following options, and now it works:

Code: Select all

sudo mount -o defaults,remount,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 /media/ntfs-target

Optional: Here's the command for mounting an unmounted ntfs partition correctly:

Code: Select all

sudo mount -o defaults,locale=de_DE.UTF-8 /dev/sdx1 /media/ntfs-target 

Note:
I've installed my system in English, so the german locales were actually missing and had to be generated:

Code: Select all

locale-gen de_DE.UTF-8

Now in order to keep things clean, let your package system know what you've done and reconfigure installed locales:

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

[PUZZLING]
Unfortunately, for me this is more of a workaround than a solution, because there are some questions left:

- Strangely, the mount options for my local NTFS drive seemed identically with the ones of the external harddisk - and my local drive could handle umlauts perfectly, while the external disk puked. strange.

- UTF8 is supposed to cure problems with special characters, so it seems that the involved NTFS partitions still require translation of multi/wide-byte characters somehow?