On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 08:45:51AM +0100, Dave Turner wrote:
> I run devuan unstable 'ceres' on my Toshiba laptop and my iMac.
> It all works with just a bit of weirdness.
> I use apt-get update apt-get upgrade and then use aptitude to fix those
> upgrades that get held back for various reasons.
> Whenever I highlight one of the held back packages and press 'e' to examine
> the various possibilities the names of the packages to be removed or
> installed are mangled with block characters and/or assorted characters from
> other non-Latin1 character sets. Upside down question marks etc.
>
> Any ideas what is going on?
>
> I am using the slim login manager and then depending on my mood fluxbox,
> xfce, or lumina - the new desktop from pc-bsd.

What's your terminal?
Are ncurses-term and ncurses-base installed?
What does this command output:
env |grep -e TERM -e LC -e LANG -e LOCALE

I ask these because I'm *guessing* that it's one of the following:
-you don't have TERM pointing to an installed & correct termcap/terminfo
database
-your localization is screwy
-you have the wrong fonts (not likely unless it's a plain xlib terminal)


HTH,
Isaac Dunham