Terminal in OS X Lion: can't write åäö on remote machine

Question

Can't type åäö on the command line when ssh'ing to a Debian machine. It works locally though.

Changing 'Declare terminal as' to 'xterm-color' doesn't seem to help, either.

Jonatan Littke · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-05T11:05:16.450

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Edit /etc/ssh_config and comment out the line:

SendEnv LANG LC_*

This config change was introduced by Lion. See man ssh_config for more information on SendEnv.

Another alternative may be to modify the machines you're accessing, as described in grawity's answer.

A related thread on this topic: http://mod16.org/hurfdurf/?p=189

edited Aug 05 '11 at 11:05

answered Aug 03 '11 at 10:07

Jonatan Littke

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And if you're on macos Ventura: edit the ssh config in your homefolder instead ( ~/.ssh/config ) and there add the line SendEnv LANG LC_* – Alisso Feb 05 '23 at 19:20

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 26 '11 at 11:54

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Make sure the remote machine has correct locale settings:

the value of $LANG (or $LC_CTYPE) should be an UTF-8 locale (en_US.utf-8 for example); on Debian, the default value is set in /etc/default/locale
the chosen locale should be listed in locale -a – if not, edit /etc/locale.gen and run locale-gen.

answered Jul 26 '11 at 11:54

u1686_grawity

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This worked before Lion though, so I'm guessing the problem is on my side. But I'll double check. – Jonatan Littke Jul 26 '11 at 12:22
locale-a gives me: locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory locale: Cannot set LC_COLLATE to default locale: No such file or directory – Jonatan Littke Jul 28 '11 at 11:54
locale-gen is not a command, only a manpage, not sure what to run. – Jonatan Littke Jul 28 '11 at 11:55
@Jonatan: You might need the `locales` package on Debian. – u1686_grawity Jul 28 '11 at 12:22
Already installed: http://cl.ly/8zrl – Jonatan Littke Aug 03 '11 at 09:58
@Jonatan: `locale-gen` is supposed to be run by root, and is in `/usr/sbin` because of that. – u1686_grawity Aug 03 '11 at 16:39
My `locales` was broken. Upgraded/reinstalled using `apt-get install locales` and then re-checked the locales using `dpkg-reconfigure locales`. After logging out and back in, the umlauts were working again. – rec May 07 '15 at 09:14

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 03 '12 at 10:15

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I had to comment out the line SendEnv LANG LC_* in /etc/ssh_config on a clean install of OS X Lion in order to get åäö to work on remote machines.

Just to make Google users happy: many of you probably want to configure this to make Irssi on remote servers work with special characters like åäö on Mac OS X Lion.

edited Mar 03 '12 at 10:15

slhck

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answered Aug 04 '11 at 11:46

nybergh

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That's what I meant to write, updated my answer, thanks. :) – Jonatan Littke Aug 05 '11 at 11:05

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 24 '12 at 11:06

1

Or even easier, you can uncheck the "Set locale environment variables on startup" setting in Terminal.app under Settings Windows > Settings Tab > Advanced and restart Terminal.app

answered Apr 24 '12 at 11:06

Luis A.

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score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 24 '13 at 19:24

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I have added:

LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
LANG=POSIX

in .bash_profile located in my home folder.

edited Mar 24 '13 at 19:24

Seth

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answered Mar 24 '13 at 18:08

powerbart

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If you meant this as an answer can you explain how this answers the question? See the [faq] and [about] pages for more information about how this site works. Thanks! – Seth Mar 24 '13 at 19:07

Terminal in OS X Lion: can't write åäö on remote machine

5 Answers5