Apport crashes when writing to stderr: UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xc1' in position 130: ordinal not in range(128)

[Dennis Schridde]

Apport is invoked by the kernel via /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern and crashes when writing some message to stderr:

ERROR: ERROR: apport (pid 23175) Fri Sep 12 22:51:58 2014: Unhandled exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport", line 367, in <module>
    (info['ExecutablePath'], info['ProcCmdline']))
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport", line 99, in error_log
    apport.error('apport (pid %s) %s: %s', os.getpid(), time.asctime(), msg)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/__init__.py", line 44, in error
    sys.stderr.write(msg % args)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xc1' in position 130: ordinal not in range(128)
ERROR: apport (pid 23175) Fri Sep 12 22:51:58 2014: pid: 23175, uid: 1000, gid: 1000, euid: 0, egid: 0
ERROR: apport (pid 23175) Fri Sep 12 22:51:58 2014: environment: environ({})

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: apport 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-35.62-generic 3.13.11.6
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-35-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.4
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Fri Sep 12 22:57:13 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-05-20 (115 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140416.1)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: apport
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Dennis Schridde (devurandom)]

Quick fix:
--- /usr/share/apport/apport.orig 2014-09-12 23:11:15.067594994 +0400
+++ /usr/share/apport/apport 2014-09-12 23:10:12.631595210 +0400
@@ -96,7 +96,7 @@
 def error_log(msg):
     '''Output something to the error log.'''

- apport.error('apport (pid %s) %s: %s', os.getpid(), time.asctime(), msg)
+ apport.error('apport (pid %s) %s: %s', os.getpid(), time.asctime(), msg.encode("utf-8"))

 def _log_signal_handler(sgn, frame):

But a better place to fix this would probably be apport.error().

[schmod (schmod)]

Similar issue with apport-kde:

  File "/usr/share/apport/apport-kde", line 530, in <module>
    sys.exit(UserInterface.run_argv())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 653, in run_argv
    return self.run_update_report()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 569, in run_update_report
    response = self.ui_present_report_details(allowed_to_report)
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport-kde", line 367, in ui_present_report_details
    desktop_info)
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport-kde", line 184, in __init__
    self.ui.ui_update_view(self)
  File "/usr/share/apport/apport-kde", line 358, in ui_update_view
    QTreeWidgetItem(keyitem, [str(line)])

Possible fix:

--- /usr/share/apport/apport-kde.orig 2015-11-03 15:03:25.923427902 -0500
+++ /usr/share/apport/apport-kde 2015-11-03 15:00:07.039222098 -0500
@@ -355,7 +355,7 @@
                not self.report._is_binary(self.report[key]):
                 lines = self.report[key].splitlines()
                 for line in lines:
- QTreeWidgetItem(keyitem, [str(line)])
+ QTreeWidgetItem(keyitem, [str(line.encode("UTF-8"))])
                 if len(lines) < 4:
                     keyitem.setExpanded(True)
             else:

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Peridot (peridot)]

This bug is still there on bionic dailies and the patch still works.