SSH garbled text

answered 2020-04-05 12:22:05 +0200

Direc
5243 ●104 ●149 ●149

updated 2020-04-05 12:39:48 +0200

It looks like LANG environmental variable isn't set when SSH connection is opened. This can be checked by running locale after login. I had to do export LANG=fi_FI.utf8 (your locale may vary) and after that I could open text files with Scandinavian letter properly. Before that they were garbled mess.

EDIT: I decided to post my findings here instead, it's not worth opening a new question. Here are the differences between on-device terminal env and SSH env (truncated for readability):

[nemo@jolla-matti ~]$ diff localenv.txt remoteenv.txt 
--- localenv.txt
+++ remoteenv.txt
@@ -1,31 +1,21 @@
-AG_PROVIDERS=/usr/share/accounts/providers
-AG_SERVICES=/usr/share/accounts/services
-AG_SERVICE_TYPES=/usr/share/accounts/service-types
-BOOTSTATE=USER
-GIO_LAUNCHED_DESKTOP_FILE_PID=19647
-LANG=fi_FI.utf8
-LIPSTICK_OPTIONS=-plugin evdevtouch:/dev/input/event0:rotate=0 -plugin evdevkeyboard:keymap=/usr/share/qt5/keymaps/boston.qmap
+LAST_LOGIN_UID=100000
-MANAGERPID=1373
-NGF_FFMEMLESS_SETTINGS=/usr/share/ngfd/plugins.d/ngf-vibra-sbj.ini
-NOTIFY_SOCKET=/run/user/100000/systemd/notify
-PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/home/nemo/bin
+PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/home/nemo/bin
-QTCONTACTS_MANAGER_OVERRIDE=org.nemomobile.contacts.sqlite
@@ -37,15 +27,17 @@
-QT_WAYLAND_COMPOSITOR_NO_THROTTLE=1
-SESSION_TARGET=default.target
+SSH_CLIENT=192.168.x.x xxxxx 22
+SSH_CONNECTION=192.168.x.x xxxxx 192.168.x.x 22
+SSH_TTY=/dev/pts/0
-_=/usr/bin/env
+XDG_SESSION_ID=c11
+_=/bin/env

There are many reasonable differences, but LANG, PATH and NOTIFY_SOCKET are the three that caught my eye the most. The desired export LANG=fi_FI.utf8 can be easily enough added to ~/.bash_profile but in my opinion that should be automatically handled.