So here is the issue I keep having after installing the Gentoo x86_64 system. When I am in the live cd environment my terminal seams to display characters just fine. When I perform a cp -v on a file I get the normal 'file' -> 'cpfile' message. However after I do the install and start the new system when I do this I am getting little boxes instead of the ' symbols. It is almost as if the tools are not compiled with Unicode support as I am running with the US_en.UTF8 locale.

I have tried to recompile binutils with an explicit Unicode tag but with no effect. I have attached a screenshot of what I am seeing. This is on a VM but I was also seeing this on real hardware when I had it installed.

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i think it is a font problem - the font does not have those characters:
(see attachment)
is this a terminal emulator in a graphical environment (if so, which one), or a tty?

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This is just the default linux terminal tty when booting.

Not an emulator or anything just plain old bash.

ok.
in that case, on my system the relevant configuration would be in /etc/vconsole.conf
and archwiki has good info on that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php..._configuration

Figured this out today. It is en_US.utf8 locale that does this. If you switch it to something else and do a env-update along with a source /etc/profile it fixes the issue. Considering that it only shows up in some commands with -v it probably just was not caught. or something else is going on with the default built utilities on x64.