kubuntu-devel-release-upgrade fails when LANG=de_DE.UTF-8

[Ernst Kloppenburg]

$ kubuntu-devel-release-upgrade
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/do-release-upgrade", line 77, in <module>
    print _("Checking for a new ubuntu release")
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xfc' in position 27: ordinal not in range(128)

$ env LANG= kubuntu-devel-release-upgrade
... works fine

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: update-manager-kde 1:0.152.25.8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-17.30-generic 3.0.22
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-17-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Apr 12 18:01:49 2012
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2012-04-12 (0 days ago)

[Marc Cheng (bdgraue)]

$ env LANG= kubuntu-devel-release-upgrade

does not work for me

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I wonder if this is related to bug 929399.

[Marc Cheng (bdgraue)]

might indeed be related in some kind, because i don't get the error when i run

$ LANGUAGE=en:en LC_ALL=C kubuntu-devel-release-upgrade

(might even be wrong how i use the command, but in this case no error)

[Ernst Kloppenburg (ernst-kloppenburg)]

The problem is not with update-manager, but with kdesudo (oneiric)!

/usr/bin/kubuntu-devel-release-upgrade just executes
kdesudo "do-release-upgrade -m desktop -f kde -d"

Calling just "do-release-upgrade -m desktop -f kde -d" works fine, and you see the first console output line with a german umlaut.

Run with kdesudo, kdesudo has to read that output from do-release-upgrade and echo it to the console. That fails.

This reasoning can be proved by doing a simple experiment (all in an environment with LANG=de_DE.UTF8)

$echo 'print u"Gl\xfcck"' > tmp.py
$python tmp.py # OK
Glück
$kdesudo python tmp.py
# fails with UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xfc' in position 2: ordinal not in range(128)

@Brian: what is the best way to proceed?
- reassign this bug to kdesudo? With updated bug description?

[Ernst Kloppenburg (ernst-kloppenburg)]

the above also answers the question from comment #3:
No, this is not related to bug 929399 where kdesudo is non involved

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

I've reassigned this to kdesudo - thanks for the detailed testing Ernst.

[Ernst Kloppenburg (ernst-kloppenburg)]

probably my testcase for printing unicode with python (which I took from a stackoverflow question) was not correct

This would be better:
$ echo 'print "m\xc3\xbcde"' tmp2.py
$ python tmp2.py
müde

$ kdesudo python tmp2.py
müde
# garbage but no error

so I guess kdesudo changes something in the environment that makes do-release-upgrade produce bad output

[Shinjo Park (peremen)]

I was amazed that this bug is still there for 6+ years. On Kubuntu 17.10 I also got the broken text from kdesudo when lang is ko_KR, and I think kdesudo is assuming current terminal charset is latin1:

$ do-release-upgrade -m desktop -f DistUpgradeViewKDE
새 우분투 배포판 확인
새로운 릴리즈를 찾을 수 없습니다.
$ kdesudo "do-release-upgrade -m desktop -f DistUpgradeViewKDE"
ì ì°ë¶í¬ ë°°í¬í íì¸
ìë¡ì´ 릴리ì¦ë¥¼ ì°¾ì ì ììµëë¤.
$ kdesudo "do-release-upgrade -m desktop -f DistUpgradeViewKDE" | iconv -t latin1 | iconv -f utf8
새 우분투 배포판 확인
새로운 릴리즈를 찾을 수 없습니다.

Version information:
$ kdesudo --version
Qt: 4.8.7
KDE 개발 플랫폼: 4.14.34
KdeSudo: 3.4.2.3