gconf_resource crashed with UnicodeDecodeError in get_gconf(): 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 2527: ordinal not in range(128)

[dino99]

i've ran checkbox on quantal i386, logged as gnome-classic

got its window but none of the selected items were checked, got that crash.

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: checkbox 0.14.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-3.3-generic 3.5.0-rc5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-3-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.3-0ubuntu2
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jul 9 15:21:05 2012
ExecutablePath: /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/gconf_resource
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python3.2mu
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python3 /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/gconf_resource
PythonArgs: ['/usr/share/checkbox/scripts/gconf_resource']
SourcePackage: checkbox
Title: gconf_resource crashed with UnicodeDecodeError in get_gconf(): 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 2527: ordinal not in range(128)
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm admin audio avahi-autoipd cdrom couchdb dialout dip disk fax floppy fuse haldaemon lpadmin netdev plugdev polkituser proxy pulse pulse-access root rtkit sambashare ssh tape tty users video whoopsie www-data

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

I suspect this has to do with some non-ascii characters in the output for gconftool-2, which aren't correctly handled by gconf_resource. However I was unable to reproduce this on my local system, even after setting my locale and language to the same ones you have (french). Non-english locales usually make encoding problems pop up, and we're very interested in getting these worked out.

Could you please run the following command in a terminal:

gconftool-2 -R / --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:$HOME/.gconf >/tmp/gconf.txt

and then attach the resulting /tmp/gconf.txt file to this report? This will let me see where the problem is, and fix gconf_resource to handle this particular case (and hopefully any others) correctly.

Thanks!

I'm setting as incomplete while you attach the file, and importance: high as any internationalization-related problems are bound to affect a large number of people.

[dino99 (9d9)]

hi Daniel,

you should have found the root problem, as i get some "locale" errors while installing a package:

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
 LANGUAGE = "fr_FR:en_NZ:en",
 LC_ALL = (unset),
 LC_TIME = "fr_FR.utf8",
 LC_MONETARY = "fr_FR.utf8",
 LC_MEASUREMENT = "fr_FR.utf8",
 LC_NUMERIC = "fr_FR.utf8",
 LANG = "fr_FR"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
 Using the fallback 'C' locale. at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Gnome.pm line 97, <> line 1.
Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
 Using the fallback 'C' locale. at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Gnome.pm line 103, <> line 1.

[dino99 (9d9)]

oem@dub:~$ locale
LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=fr_FR:en_NZ:en
LC_CTYPE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_TIME=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_NAME=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

[dino99 (9d9)]

Additional note:

while trying to set my language settings via System Settings menu, when i hit "apply to whole system", this process immediatly loop and the window become greyed.

[dino99 (9d9)]

the .cache/checkbox/checkbox.log also warns about python errors

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Looks like changing the explicit "ascii" decoding on line 47 so it uses utf-8 instead may solve this problem. I'll try to get a fix submitted in a while.

I'll set this to triaged. Thanks for the info!

[dino99 (9d9)]

hi Daniel,

as far i can remember, this issue has started after upgrading the latest language-selector-gnome 0.84

[dino99 (9d9)]

workaround about post #3 above:

initial /etc/environment was:
PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

adding a second line :
 LC_ALL="fr_FR.utf8"

solve this post #3 problem , but not the main issue : "apply to whole system" endless looping into the language gui.

[dino99 (9d9)]

Similar error into a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

Traceback (most recent call last):
            File"usr/bin/add-apt-repository", line 139, in <module>
                     print(_( .......
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character '\xe0' in position 34: ordinal not in range(128)

This is with Quantal i386 & fr_FR-utf8

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

@dino99:

Please report the add-apt-repository separately using:

ubuntu-bug python-software-properties

This will bring that bug to the developers' attention.

Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package checkbox - 0.14.3

---------------
checkbox (0.14.3) quantal; urgency=low

  * New upstream release (LP: #1033652)

  [Benjamin Kerensa]
  * Changed description of PCMCIA/PCIX to PCMCIA/ExpressCard since PCIX
    generally applies to servers (LP: #992249)

  [Brendan Donegan]
  * Removed call to unlink temporary file in Html5Thread part of gpu_test.
    Also addressed a few pyflakes complaints and removed a stray print.
  * Include block device name in fields of block_device resource
    output. This will prevent different block device fields from being
    confused with each other (LP: #1027849)
  * Fix apport_prompt.py so it properly checks the value in
    /etc/default/apport (LP: #1029897)
  * Initially disable the 'Run' tab in the Qt UI, re-enabling it when the
    'Start Testing' has been clicked (LP: #1029815)
  * Put Component and Status into one tree view on the selection screen,
    rather than two seperate ones (LP: #1030871)
  * Disable the Select All and Deselect All buttons in the selection
    view during testing (LP: #1032259)

  [Daniel Manrique]
  * New version 0.14.3 for Quantal Quetzal development.
  * alsa_info is invoked with --no-dialog, otherwise if dialog is installed
    it results in invalid data in the submission file and results.
    (LP: #1028065)
  * Instruct Chromium browser to accept file:// URLs so it can correctly
    open the checkbox submission.xml report (LP: #1026614)
  * scripts/gconf_resource: decode gconf output as utf-8 rather than ascii
    (LP: #1022593)
  * jobs/user_apps.txt.in: Quicktime test now depends on gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
    to ensure it's able to play .mov files (LP: #633009)
  * scripts/network_check: InvalidURL exception is caught and handled more
    cleanly (LP: #751701)

  [Sylvain Pineau]
  * jobs/usb.txt.in, scripts/disk_read_performance_test: Add a USB3 read
    performance test.
    scripts/block_device_resource: Add the maximum usb specification supported
    by both a block device and the corresponding root hub port.
  * qt/frontend/qtfront.ui, qt/frontend/images/checkbox-qt-head.png:
    Add transparency properties to the main window header to keep the main theme
    colors in the widget background (LP: #1030857)

  [Jeff Marcom]
  * Added timeout to job call for disk smart test.

  [Marc Tardif]
  * Escaping encoded strings in udevadm output (LP: #1025381)

  [Jeff Lane]
  * jobs/cpu.txt.in: added a depends to cpu/scaling_test-log-attach to ensure
    that job does not run until afte cpu/scaling_test (LP: #1031994)

  [Matt Fischer]
  * scripts/network_device_info: added a check to ensure what lspci reports and
    what NetworkManger reports (if it is installed) are the same. Reports more
    useful info now like driver and driver version, IP address, etc.
  * scripts/cycle_vts: added checks to fail test if chvt returns a non-zero
    exit code. Added a final check at the end to verify we did land back on the
    original VT after testing.
    jobs/miscellanea.txt.in: fixed a typo in the chvt job. It used to reqire
    'package.alias' instead of 'package.name'
 -- Daniel Manrique <email address hidden> Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:21:24 -0400