centos – Nasty character encoding issue

I have been using a FOSS software written in perl (sql-ledger) for many many years. Currently self hosted on CentOS 7. For some reasons, I need to update OS to a higher version (preferably Rocky/Alma 9).

Installed Apache and Postgresql 13, transferred all data and the software to a new Alma 9.

However, the non-english characters look garbled. No matter what I did, I couldn’t fix it.

Here are what I did and findings:

• If the software is on CentOS 7, the database is on the new OS, all fine.
• Checked all the texts of the software. All are encoded as UTF-8.
• Encoding of the database is UTF-8. All data on the database look nice using Adminer.
• Installed Rocky/Alma 8 and Ubuntu 22.04, the problem persists.
• Tried many different versions of PostgreSQL, the problem persists.
• Source code of the served pages declare UTF-8 as character encoding.
• I normally use Firefox. Tried other browsers, the problem persists.
• All the new OS have the required UTF-8 locale.

The only solution for me is to have the software files on CentOS 7 irrespective of database location.

I’m at my wit’s end with this problem. I am stumped and stuck with CentOS 7.

I would appreciate any help.

Thank you