Broken shell step preview in VSCode's chat window

[nos1609]

What version of Codex is running?

0.53.0

What subscription do you have?

Plus

Which model were you using?

gpt5-codex

What platform is your computer?

Win 11 10.0.26200.0 ARM64 + WSL Fedora 42

What issue are you seeing?

some unreadable text in shell step preview

What steps can reproduce the bug?

run codex exec "пример", the chat's preview window of VSCode extension, it is going to show some weird characters, no matter fonts or locale availability.

What is the expected behavior?

correct text encoding, accordingly to OS fonts and locale availability, same as in the VSCode's built-in terminal window.

Additional information

Able to reproduce locally on demand if needed

[bolinfest]

@nos1609 Out of curiosity, was this running anything whether the output may have been binary or had any special encoding?

Is it possible for you to find the corresponding .jsonl file under ~/.codex/sessions and could you share the content if it's not sensitive? Perhaps then we could at least figure out what command it was running?

[nos1609]

@bolinfest here you go, a new example

$ bash -lc 'prompt="$(< tmp/assistant_contexts/20251104-anaconda.txt)"; (HOME=$PWD/tmp/codex_home XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$PWD/tmp/codex_home/.config codex exec "$prompt" --output-last-message tmp/assistant_contexts/responses/codex.txt) & wait'
2025-11-04T15:54:40.792590Z  WARN codex_core::project_doc: Project doc `/home/nos1609/myawesomeproject/AGENTS.md` exceeds remaining budget (32768 bytes) - truncating.
OpenAI Codex v0.53.0 (research preview)
--------
workdir: /home/nos1609/myawesomeproject
model: gpt-5-codex
provider: openai
approval: never
sandbox: workspace-write [workdir, /tmp, $TMPDIR]
reasoning effort: medium
reasoning summaries: auto
--------
user
�он�ек��:
- Rocky Linux 10 ���ановка �е�ез Anaconda из iPXE.
- �ене�и��ем kickstart �к�ип�ом `generate_ks.sh`; ди�к в�би�ае��� ав�о (`PRIMARY_DISK`), �азме�ка в %pre запи��вае��� в /tmp/ks-disk.cfg.
- �о�ле зап��ка iPXE и заг��зки Anaconda видим в `anaconda.log`:
  - `15:00:47,992 ERR kickstart.parsing: the following arguments are required: -- name`
  - ���ал�ной лог �каз�вае�, ��о %pre-�к�ип� в�полнил�� ��пе�но, ди�ки оп�еделили�� (`sda`), bootloader �ежим ENABLED, custom partitioning �оздан.
- � kickstart (`build/ks.cfg`) ди�ек�о�ов `part` �озда�м � �лагами `--label=... --name=...`, п�име� дл� BIOS:

part biosboot --fstype=biosboot --size=1 --ondisk=${PRIMARY_DISK} --label=BIOSBOOT --name=biosboot
part /boot --fstype=xfs --size=1024 --ondisk=${PRIMARY_DISK} --label=BOOT --name=boot
part swap --fstype=swap --size=${SWAP_SIZE} --ondisk=${PRIMARY_DISK} --label=SWAP --name=swap
part / --fstype=xfs --size=1 --grow --ondisk=${PRIMARY_DISK} --label=ROOT --name=root

- `%include /tmp/ks-disk.cfg` подкл��ае��� по�ле %pre; никаки� `logvol`/`volgroup` не�.
- �ол�зова�ел��кие па�аме��� (hostname, ipv4/6) под��авл����� ко��ек�но.

�ада�а:
- �он���, по�ем� Anaconda в�� е�� ��еб�е� `--name` и на какой команде ��о ��аба��вае�.
- ��едложи�� минимал�н�е п�авки �аблона или гене�а�ии, ��об� ��а�но п�ой�и па��инг Kickstart.
- �о возможно��и под�ве�ди��, н�жно ли добавл��� `--name` к `clearpart`/`ignoredisk` или каким-�о д��гим ���но���м, либо пе�екл��и���� на `part --asprimary`/`reqpart`.

�г�ани�ени�:
- Kickstart �о�ми��е��� динами�е�ки в %pre (Anaconda 40.13/Rocky 10).
- � rescue ок��жении не� ��или�� `tee`, и�пол�з�ем �ол�ко POSIX-�елл.

Also noted a "self-fixing" behavior - once completed the task, review shows text in correct encoding.

Worth mentioning, that @LIHUA919 description is accurate about the issue.
#6182

[nos1609]

Wow, this markup even breaks GH's own code block preview 🤔

[bolinfest]

@joshka-oai this appears to be a bad interaction between VS Code's integrated terminal on Windows and...non-Latin characters, maybe? Seems likely to be a decoding or escaping issue: can you investigate?

/cc @easong-openai

[joshka-oai]

The linked PR seems reasonable, but I wonder In terms of sidestepping this issue rather than detecting and converting if it is reasonable / possible for codex to configure the shell to only output utf-8. Or is that not possible? Apologies in advance for my naive question here. It's likely that @nos1609 and @LIHUA919 are probably much more familiar with international code pages than I am here (there's a lot of unknown unknowns for me).