FAQ: Flux Job IDs in F58 format print improperly

[SteVwonder]

Depending on the system you are running on and the locale settings, the printing of Flux Job IDs in F58 format can result in weird boxes, underscores, mojibake, or complete corruption of the terminal state. For example:

$ flux mini submit hostname
_Kg1PZgns

or

$ flux mini submit hostname
Kg1PZgns

This issue appears on systems with no locale information set (i.e., LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, and LANG are all unset and the values printed by locale are all implied). When no locale information is set, python 3.7+ automatically coerces the locale to C.UTF-8

The preferred solution is to set LC_ALL to something (either C, POSIX, or *.UTF-8). Try adding the following to your shell profile script (e.g., ~/.profile): export LC_ALL="C.UTF-8". If your terminal does not support unicode, try just export LC_ALL=C. Ultimately anything that isn't empty should work (C will just prevent the use of unicode characters).

In scenarios where you cannot change your locale (i.e., it must be *.UTF-8), but you want the Flux IDs in F58 to be printed with the ascii f, you should set FLUX_F58_FORCE_ASCII=1.