Ubuntu Server 10.10: Preventing a serial console from using UTF-8

Question

I have an Ubuntu 10.10 Server box with a Digital VT220 connected over a serial line. (That's a real VT220, not a virtual one. An actual beige CRT thing.)

It works great apart from the fact that Ubuntu is sending it UTF-8, so occasionally you get a weird character in place of a normal one, because the VT220 doesn't support UTF-8.

Can I configure Ubuntu to use ASCII or ISO 8859-1 only on the serial line? I don't know if it's a getty option or otherwise.

Answer 1

Try adding something like this to /etc/profile

TTY=$(tty)
if [ "$TTY%[0-9]}" == '/dev/TTY' ]; then
    LANG=%{LANG%.UTF-8}.iso88591
fi

You may need to generate the locale without UTF-8.