Why am I seeing strange characters on the screen when I log onto RedHat, particularly when I look at man pages?

The problem you are experiencing is that RedHat by default uses UTF-8 to encode its output. Either the version of SecureCRT® that you are using does not support UTF-8 encoded output, or the output encoding is not set to UTF-8 for the session in use.

The following are three possible solutions to this problem:

Solution 1: Enable UTF-8 output encoding for the session in use.

If you are using a version of SecureCRT prior to 4.0.1, you will need to update your version. This may be a free upgrade for you depending on when you purchased your SecureCRT license. Please check the upgrade eligibility page on the VanDyke web site to determine if you qualify:

http://www.vandyke.com/pricing/upgrades/index.html

To enable UTF-8 encoding for a session in SecureCRT 5.0, go to the Session Options dialog. In the Terminal/Appearance category, set the "Character encoding" in the "Fonts" group to "UTF-8".

To enable UTF-8 encoding for a session in SecureCRT 4.0.1 through 4.1.x, go to the Session Options dialog. In the Emulation/Advanced category, set the "Output" entry in the "Character encoding" group to "UTF-8".

Solution 2: Turn off UTF-8 encoding for your user on the RedHat machine.

In your .bash_profile, add the following lines (this is for the bash shell; if you are using a different shell, the settings may be slightly different):

LANG=en_US
SUPPORTED=en_US:en
export LANG SUPPORTED

Note: The above commands use en_US as an example; other languages can also be used.

Solution 3: Turn off UTF-8 encoding system wide on the RedHat machine. (Note: This solution requires that you have root access.)

In the file /etc/sysconfig/i18n there is a line that reads:

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

Change the line to read:

LANG="en_US"

Note: The above commands use en_US as an example; other languages can also be used.