rsync: "Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character (84)"
 

I'm trying to sync up some files to an external drive. 99% of them are fine. But rsync does not like special or wide characters like a tilde above the n in jalapeno.

I can't seem to find an answer on this one. Anyone have any suggestions?

Probably you're using a region-specific encoding (eg: in France we often use ISO-8859-1) and rsync is expecting UTF-8. In UTF-8 specification, as a security measure, it is considered a fatal error to meet a non-conforming character.

Yves.

I figured that it may be something like this.

So I'm wondering about my choices. I could rename the files, use a different encoding method, or tell rsync to ignore the error.

Are these correct thoughts?

I have the same problem, even with the filenames in UTF-8, with a external disk.
If you want to convert file names in UTF-8

To convert file names in UTF-8 encoding, for example,

For changing from latin1 to utf8

convmv -f latin1 -t utf8 file_name
For really do it:
convmv -f latin1 -t utf8 file_name --notest

But as I said I have a problem with a external disk, that from some reason I can not figure out does not accept extended ASCII characters in filenames

talueguito
raul

Since this is now almost 5 year old thread but still the top Google one it's time for an answer.

Use rsync's --iconv parameter. It will convert filenames on the fly, from the remote side to the destination.

--iconv=<local>,<remote> for example: --iconv=utf8,latin1

Filenames on the remote side are not affected.

But do realise that you are changing the encoding of the filenames. It might theoretically cause you problems (if they are referenced by other legacy programs/files).