Home / ubuntu / Questions / 858327
Accepted
Kim Stacks
Asked: 2016-12-08 23:43:28 +0800 CST

how to input chinese characters into a ubuntu 14.04 server edition with no GUI?

  • 772

I created a file that is in UTF-8 encoding. This file contains chinese characters.

When I sftp the file from my macbook into the ubuntu 14.04 server headless, the Chinese characters become diamond shape.

When I look at the file (either via SSH or directly on the machine itself using a CRT monitor), the file always appears as diamond shaped.

The language locale of the ubuntu is en_US.UTF-8

How do I

a) either somehow retype the characters inside the ubuntu headless 14.04?

Or

b) transfer the file over and still have the chinese characters rendered correctly?

UPDATE

I mean I have no GUI on the 14.04 ubuntu server edition. The files whenever I open using vim or nano or whatever editor keep showing up the chinese characters as diamond shape things.

14.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    A "headless" server cannot display anything -- not Latin letters, not Chinese characters; it is headless. It is your terminal / web browser / whatever application you use locally which displays the characters. You are looking at the wrong end of the pipe; for example, the picture below show how a program on the server will send the character <U+7F51> (网, wǎng, "net", "network") to an application on the local machine:

    User     Local machine                  Headless server
        ______________                    ____________
 ( )   |  __________  |                  |            |
 /|\   | | Terminal | |  \xE7 \xBD \x91  |            |
/ | \  | |          | |<-----------------|  <U+7F51>  |
  |    | |    网    | | (UTF-8 encoding) |            |
 / \   | |__________| |                  |            |
/   \  |______________|                  |____________|
    • 0