SMB authentication fails if password contains @ character

[apothegm]

I've run into this problem multiple times where I can't figure out why the heck the WMC PVR addon for Kodi gives me the "Recorded TV folder not found" error. Then I started created separate users in Windows to access the share.

I finally realized it's because there's an issue with how it builds the smb:// connection string. Since it's typically formatted as "user:password@host". So if your password contains an @, it might look like "user:pass1@@host", and it fails.

Is there a way to fix this so it supports passwords with @ characters in them?

[krustyreturns]

Interesting, thanks. All I can think is that the '@' in the password could be substituted by %40. That is what I had to do in the login field once MS started pushing email addresses for windows login. However, I don't know if kodi (smb?) would accept it in a password. Seems easier to just not use @ in the password. I guess I could flag it as an illegal char in swmc.

[apothegm]

I guess I could flag it as an illegal char in swmc.

Yeah, that might work. Not sure about substituting %40 either.

I mostly wanted to bring this up because this might be the 5th or 6th time I've run into this and I never could pinpoint exactly what I did to fix it until now. So if anyone else struggled with this problem, maybe they'll find this post useful. The struggle was real! and I don't know why it took me this long to carefully look at the Kodi logs and notice the two @ in the smb connection string.