Centrify

Tips for finding Knowledge Articles

  • - Enter just a few key words related to your question or problem
  • - Add Key words to refine your search as necessary
  • - Do not use punctuation
  • - Search is not case sensitive
  • - Avoid non-descriptive filler words like "how", "the", "what", etc.
  • - If you do not find what you are looking for the first time,reduce the number of key words you enter and try searching again.
  • - Minimum supported Internet Explorer version is IE9
Home  >
article

KB-1966: UTF-8 character in password or hostname fails

Authentication Service ,  

12 April,16 at 11:45 AM

Applies to:
 
All versions of Centrify DirectControl
 
Question:
 
Does Centrify support the usage of UTF-8 characters in AD passwords or hostnames?
 
Answer:
 
UTF-8 (UCS Transformation Format — 8-bit) is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode.UTF-8 is also increasingly being used as the default character encoding in operating systems, programming languages, APIs, and software applications.
 
 
1) Currently we do not support the usage of UTF-8 characters in hostnames.
 
You will see the following message when you attempt to join a Centrify server with UTF-8 character in the hostname to AD.
 
In the below example, the name of the server is Ól27 where Ó is the UTF-8 character.
 
[root@Ól27 ~]# adjoin -u administrator@yourcompany.com yourcompany.com 
 
Error: computer name must start with a letter or underscore, follow by a number, letter, _ or - 
 
Development efforts are underway for supporting this capability in future releases.
 
 
2) We have done preliminary testing of UTF-8 in passwords in our lab and it has worked fine. Full support will be provided in future releases.

Cause : The Kerberos 1.4.3 libraries that manage hashing of passwords are incompatible with UTF-8 characters. We will migrate code from the Kerberos 1.9 libraries to enable this support.
 
Note: For the above to work, the terminal should support UTF-8. Gnome-based or other console based logins will not work.
 
For example: An Euro or UTF-8 char can be created by holding down the ALT key and enabling the num lockpad on the PC and typing 0211 will give you the UTF-8 character Ó and so on. This must be entering in the password field of the Centrify/AD account.
 
On a Putty terminal (to a unix box), you should change the setting under Windows -> Translation -> Received data assumed to be in which character set: choose "UTF-8" in the pull down. Attempt login.
   
For more information of UTF-8, please refer to the Wiki page link provided below as a courtesy.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
     

Still have questions? Click here to log a technical support case, or collaborate with your peers in Centrify's Online Community.

Related Articles

 articleKB-2346: adjoin self-serve fails for precreated computer with hostname > 15 chars, in disjointed DNS with error:Constraint violation : 0000200B:.., Att 9026b (dNSHostName) articleKB-2962: adjoin self-serve fails for pre-created computer with hostname > 15 chars with error:get creds: Client not found in Kerberos database articleKB-1179: X11 Forwarding fails with Centrify OpenSSH 5.0 & Solaris articleKB-10559: Command adquery fails within Docker container articleKB-8306: Centrify-enabled samba not accessible due to error "NT_STATUS_CANT_ACCESS_DOMAIN_INFO" articleKB-5929: Does Centrify provide documentation for Administrators who wants to monitor Centrify Server Suite events? articleKB-1215: Error: One or more of the following SPNs already associated with other account in the forest articleKB-5793: AIX hosts in 'down' mode running Centrify DirectControl 5.0.2, stop and restart failed articleKB-6041: How to show current license type in use by adclient