If you have a Supermicro motherboard, you have probably already downloaded the IPMIView utility. This utility allows access to motherboard sensors but most importantly, it includes KVM functionality, enabling you to access your computer as if it had a screen. Pure magic when it works. However, when using Ubuntu 23.04, I encountered difficulties running it due to the Malformed \uxxxx encoding error.

An internal LaunchAnywhere application error has occured and this application cannot proceed. (LAX)

Stack Trace:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Malformed \uxxxx encoding.
    at java.base/java.util.Properties.loadConvert(Properties.java:678)
    at java.base/java.util.Properties.load0(Properties.java:455)
    at java.base/java.util.Properties.load(Properties.java:381)
    at com.zerog.common.java.util.PropertiesUtil.loadProperties(Unknown Source)
    at com.zerog.lax.LAX.<init>(Unknown Source)
    at com.zerog.lax.LAX.main(Unknown Source)

Nevertheless, since Supermicro provides all the necessary components, bypassing this error is actually quite simple. Just run the main .jar file directly.

cd <directory>
./jre/bin/java -jar IPMIView20.jar

And that’s it.