zsh-cursor displacement over ssh

Question

I am running Arch Linux locally. When I connect to my remote Debian 10 server via ssh, the cursor behaves in an awkward way:

As long as every command returns statuscode 0, everything is fine. When another code is returned, the cursor and the right prompt are shifted to the left by 2 characters, as shown below. The first prompt is normal, the second after pressing Ctrl+C:

----|---------------------------------
~ »                    user@hostname
--|-----------------------------------
~ »            130 ↵ user@hostname

I have manually changed the line of dashes afterwards to show where the cursor is: below the |. I am in fact overriding the » when I start typing a command.

When I then try to use a command from history and change it, I change it at a different character than is shown on the screen, which is quite confusing and annoying.

After the next command that returned statuscode 0, the cursor is normal again.

This seems to be happening accross terminals (I tried in the console and using Alacritty and URXVT).

I am using the "af-magic" - theme. When I switch to another theme that does not show status codes, the problem disappears. It is the same though for other themes that do show the statuscode (e.g. "smt"). So something about the statuscode display seems to be causing the issue.

My .zshrc is the same both locally and remotely. Locally, I don't have that problem.

HISTSIZE=1000000
SAVEHIST=1000000
HISTFILE=~/.cache/zsh/history

## oh my zsh
export ZSH="$HOME/.config/zsh/oh-my-zsh"

ZSH_THEME="af-magic"

plugins=(
  git vi-mode zsh-autosuggestions history-substring-search
)

ZSH_DISABLE_COMPFIX="true"
source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh

## Load aliases
[ -f "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/shell/aliasrc" ] && source "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/shell/aliasrc"

## vim mode config
# ---------------
bindkey -M vicmd 'k' history-substring-search-up
bindkey -M vicmd 'j' history-substring-search-down

# Activate vim mode.
bindkey -v

# autosuggest config
ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_HIGHLIGHT_STYLE="fg=#3a3a3a"
bindkey '^ ' autosuggest-accept

# Remove mode switching delay.
KEYTIMEOUT=5

# Change cursor shape for different vi modes.
function zle-keymap-select {
  if [[ ${KEYMAP} == vicmd ]] ||
     [[ $1 = 'block' ]]; then
    echo -ne '\e[1 q'

  elif [[ ${KEYMAP} == main ]] ||
       [[ ${KEYMAP} == viins ]] ||
       [[ ${KEYMAP} = '' ]] ||
       [[ $1 = 'beam' ]]; then
    echo -ne '\e[5 q'
  fi
}
zle -N zle-keymap-select

_fix_cursor() {
   echo -ne '\e[5 q'
}
precmd_functions+=(_fix_cursor)

Any tips on how to solve this?

Answer 1

My locale was not set. I set it now, and it works!