Ssh – How to view a remote unicode file via ssh

sshterminalunicode

I have a unicode file that contains Chinese characters. I have a local and a remote copy of it.

When I use less on the local file the characters are shown properly:

奥尔德林

However, when I ssh to the remote machine and look at the remote version of the same file the characters are just shown like this instead:

<E5><A5><A5><E5><B0><94><E5><BE><B7><E6><9E><97>

How can I properly view the remote unicode file (when connected via ssh)?

(I'm using the standard terminal application on Mac OS.)

Best Answer

Does the file display correctly if you cat it (or used head to shorten the output)?

I think the key to making less display the file properly lies in setting LANG or LC_ALL properly. On your local system and the remote system compare the values of those variables and see if they are different and whether changing the remote one to match makes a difference.

From the less man page (Note the last sentence):

       If  neither  LESSCHARSET nor LESSCHARDEF is set, but any of the strings
       "UTF-8", "UTF8", "utf-8" or "utf8" is found in the LC_ALL,  LC_TYPE  or
       LANG environment variables, then the default character set is utf-8.

       If  that  string  is  not found, but your system supports the setlocale
       interface, less will use setlocale  to  determine  the  character  set.
       setlocale  is  controlled  by  setting the LANG or LC_CTYPE environment
       variables.

       Finally, if the setlocale interface is also not available, the  default
       character set is latin1.

       Control  and  binary  characters  are  displayed  in  standout (reverse
       video).  Each such character is displayed in caret notation if possible
       (e.g.  ^A for control-A).  Caret notation is used only if inverting the
       0100 bit results in a normal printable character.  Otherwise, the char‐
       acter  is displayed as a hex number in angle brackets.

Related Solutions

SSH back to the local machine from a remote SSH session

If when you connect back to your local it allows you to login before hanging, then this isn't the answer. If you don't get that far, you're probably not getting back to your Mac (either not getting anywhere or hitting SSH on a gateway). Try a reverse tunnel (it will require GatewayPorts set to On in sshd_config on your server, but I believe this is default):
you@yourMac$ ssh -R 2000:localhost:22 user@remoteserver
That should allow you to connect to the server as normal, but also open a tunnel so that you can connect back on port 2000 (any port over 1024 should work), so you@yourserver$ ssh -p2000 user@localhost

EDIT: Changed hostname to localhost

Ssh – How to automate SSH login with password

Don't use a password. Generate a passphrase-less SSH key and push it to your VM.

If you already have an SSH key, you can skip this step… Just hit Enter for the key and both passphrases:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

Copy your keys to the target server:

$ ssh-copy-id id@server
id@server's password:

Now try logging into the machine, with ssh 'id@server', and check-in:

.ssh/authorized_keys

Note: If you don't have .ssh dir and authorized_keys file, you need to create it first

to make sure we haven’t added extra keys that you weren’t expecting.

Finally, check to log in…

$ ssh id@server

id@server:~$

You may also want to look into using ssh-agent if you want to try keeping your keys protected with a passphrase.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

SSH back to the local machine from a remote SSH session

Ssh – How to automate SSH login with password

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