Comment 20 for bug 394570

I don't understand: why does it require an extension to SSH protocol?

Sure, one possible way would be to make ssh forward this bit of information. However, the IUTF8 flag should be set consistently with the locale (the character set part), which is not forwarded by ssh either - but still set on the server.

Another approach could be to do whatever happens to the locale: when you log on remotely, someone sets this environment variable for you. Whoever does this (pam, login script, whatever) could also modify the terminal settings, couldn't it? Taking this approach, you don't need to modify the protocol, just make sure that whenever someone logs in via ssh, they don't only get $LANG and stuff but also the stty iutf8 bit set correctly.

Moreover, I believe the meaning of /sys/module/vt/parameters/default_utf8 is that every newly allocated terminal gets the iutf8 flag set automatically to this value by the kernel. Should the ssh server or login procedure be unable to get the locale information, they ought to respect whatever is set here. This yet again doesn't require extending the protocol.