How to change codepage for WSL console?

Question

I've read Problems when using "New Windows Terminal" to ssh into non-UTF codepage servers where an answer suggests using LUIT or maybe Screen. But I am wondering if there is a different answer for the WSL console than for SSH

I am using Oracle Linux 8.5 under WSL on Windows 10.

I have a legacy Linux application that emits text encoded as CP437. It can't be configured to emit UTF-8.

This obviously doesn't display correctly as the WSL Console is understandably set for UTF-8 (code page 65001)

The "Current Code Page" value here is 65001 but there is no obvious way to set it either temporarily or permanently.

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I tried opening a command prompt and using chcp cp437 before invoking wsl but this didn't make any difference

Between the >< is some 0xbf characters that I edited in using vim and can see in hexdump -C

I'd prefer not to make registry changes or affect my whole Windows environment.

Oracle Linux 8 is derived from Red Hat 8 and has deprecated screen. Its package installer yum doesn't find luit which exhausts my ideas so far for translating CP437 output to UTF-8 inside Linux.

I've tried Windows Terminal (invoked as terminal from the desktop search bar, but this doesn't seem to give me any options regarding code pages / encodings.

Note: the white on green border is drawn using ANSI commands, not using the CP437 box-draw characters which I am trying to get working.

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Can it be done?

Answer 1

I haven't found an answer to my exact question but I have found a couple of usable workarounds.

SSHD + PuTTY

Initially, the only workaround I found was starting sshd and using Putty.

On Oracle 8.5 Linux in WSL I ran sudo ssh-keygen -A then sudo /usr/sbin/sshd. Then ran the Putty terminal-emulator, connected to localhost:22 (SSH protocol) and set Putty's translation to CP437 in Settings, Window, Translation.

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LUIT

Eventually I decided to make a more determined effort to use LUIT

luit is probably packaged into X11 in the Oracle LInux repositories and I don't need all of X11

I downloaded the source for luit from https://invisible-island.net/luit/, compiled it and used that as follows.

sudo yum install gcc
wget https://invisible-island.net/datafiles/release/luit.tar.gz
tar xvzf luit.tar.gz
cd luit*/
./configure
make
sudo make install
man luit
luit -list
cd legacy_app_dir
luit -encoding CP437 legacy_app