How not to pass the locale through an ssh connection command

Question

I have some aliases for ssh, example:

alias buildWork="ssh work '~/build_app'" 

The problem is that the ssh command passes some variables like $LC_CTYPE that causes some errors.

How to prevent that and use the server configurations ?

Answer 1

It sounds like your SSH client is configured to forward the locale settings. You can prevent this by altering your configuration (the global file is typically /etc/ssh/ssh_config):

# comment out / remove the following line SendEnv LANG LC_* 

Alternatively you can change the configuration of the server, by editing /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the remote machine (note the d in sshd_config):

# comment out / remove the following line AcceptEnv LANG LC_* 

Answer 2

As already explained in other answers, the client will send all environment variables specified via SendEnv in /etc/ssh/ssh_config. You can also force ssh to not send already defined variable names, using your user's configuration.

From OpenSSH man page:

It is possible to clear previously set SendEnv variable names by prefixing patterns with -. The default is not to send any environment variables.

So, to prevent sending your locale, you can put the following into your ~/.ssh/config:

SendEnv -LC_* -LANG*