PuTTY Character Encoding - Official Configuration Guide

Why SSH Output Shows Gibberish

Garbled characters (often called "mojibake" or "乱码" in Chinese) appear when there's a mismatch between:

The character encoding PuTTY expects
The character encoding the server sends
The locale settings on the remote system
The font used in PuTTY

Common Symptoms:

Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters appear as ??? or boxes
Accented characters (é, ñ, ü) display incorrectly
Special symbols show as random characters
File names with non-ASCII characters look corrupted
Man pages or documentation appears unreadable

Common Causes

1. Mismatched Character Encoding

PuTTY uses: ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) by default
Most modern systems use: UTF-8
Result: Multi-byte characters display incorrectly

2. Server Locale Issues

Server locale not set correctly
Terminal type not properly configured
LANG environment variable misconfigured

3. Font Limitations

Font doesn't include required character glyphs
Fixed-width font missing Unicode support
Font size affecting character rendering

Solution 1: Change PuTTY Character Set (Primary Fix)

✓ This fixes 90% of garbled character issues!

Steps:

Open PuTTY Configuration
- Launch putty.exe
- Load your saved session (if applicable)
Navigate to Translation Settings:
- In the left panel: Window → Translation
Change Character Set:
- Find "Remote character set" dropdown
- Change from "ISO-8859-1:1998 (Latin-1, West Europe)" to:
- "UTF-8" ← Select this
Save Your Session:
- Go back to Session category
- Click "Save"
Connect and Test:
- Click "Open"
- Characters should now display correctly

Solution 2: Adjust Server Locale

Check Current Locale

# Check current locale settings
$ locale

# You should see UTF-8 in the output
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

Fix Locale on Ubuntu/Debian

# Generate UTF-8 locales
$ sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

# Update locale
$ sudo update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

# For Chinese (Simplified)
$ sudo locale-gen zh_CN.UTF-8

# For Chinese (Traditional)
$ sudo locale-gen zh_TW.UTF-8

# Apply changes (logout and login, or run)
$ source /etc/default/locale

Fix Locale on CentOS/RHEL

# Set system locale
$ sudo localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

# Verify
$ localectl status

Temporary Fix (Current Session Only)

# Set for current session
$ export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
$ export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

# Add to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc for persistence
$ echo 'export LANG=en_US.UTF-8' >> ~/.bashrc
$ echo 'export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8' >> ~/.bashrc

Solution 3: Change PuTTY Font

Recommended Fonts for Unicode:

Navigate to Appearance:
- In PuTTY config: Window → Appearance
Click "Change" for Font:
- Try these Unicode-capable fonts:

Font Name	Best For
Consolas	General use, good Unicode support
Lucida Console	Wider character support
DejaVu Sans Mono	Excellent Unicode coverage
Cascadia Code	Modern, comprehensive Unicode
Source Code Pro	Clean, wide language support

Select a font and click OK
Save your session

Solution 4: Install Language Support

For Chinese Characters

# Ubuntu/Debian
$ sudo apt-get install language-pack-zh-hans
$ sudo apt-get install fonts-wqy-microhei fonts-wqy-zenhei

# CentOS/RHEL
$ sudo yum install glibc-langpack-zh
$ sudo yum groupinstall "Chinese Support"

For Japanese Characters

# Ubuntu/Debian
$ sudo apt-get install language-pack-ja
$ sudo apt-get install fonts-ipafont fonts-ipaexfont

For Korean Characters

# Ubuntu/Debian
$ sudo apt-get install language-pack-ko
$ sudo apt-get install fonts-nanum fonts-nanum-coding

Example Fix Walkthrough

Scenario: Chinese File Names Display as ????

Step 1: PuTTY Configuration

Window → Translation → Remote character set: UTF-8
Window → Appearance → Change font to: Consolas or Lucida Console
Save session

Step 2: Server Configuration

# SSH into server
$ ssh user@server

# Check current locale
$ locale
# If not UTF-8, fix it:

$ sudo locale-gen zh_CN.UTF-8
$ export LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8
$ export LC_ALL=zh_CN.UTF-8

# Add to ~/.bashrc for permanence
$ echo 'export LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8' >> ~/.bashrc

Step 3: Test

# Create test file with Chinese name
$ touch 测试文件.txt

# List files
$ ls -la

# Should display correctly now!

Troubleshooting

Still Showing Boxes or Question Marks

Try this checklist:

✓ PuTTY character set is UTF-8
✓ Server locale is UTF-8 (locale command)
✓ Font supports the characters (try DejaVu Sans Mono)
✓ Reconnect after changing settings
✓ Language packs installed on server

Characters Correct in vim but Wrong in Terminal

Solution:

vim may have its own encoding settings
Check :set encoding in vim
Add to ~/.vimrc: set encoding=utf-8
Also add: set fileencoding=utf-8

Some Characters Display, Others Don't

Cause: Font doesn't have glyphs for all Unicode characters