diff -Nru mdadm-3.3/debian/changelog mdadm-3.3/debian/changelog
--- mdadm-3.3/debian/changelog	2015-06-16 02:48:09.000000000 -0700
+++ mdadm-3.3/debian/changelog	2016-05-18 16:20:55.000000000 -0700
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+mdadm (3.3-2ubuntu2.1) wily; urgency=medium
+
+  * debian/source_mdadm.py: fix bytes versus strings mismatch that
+    caused the apport hook to fail (LP: #1583279)
+
+ -- Steve Beattie <sbeattie@ubuntu.com>  Wed, 18 May 2016 16:18:51 -0700
+
 mdadm (3.3-2ubuntu2) wily; urgency=medium
 
   * debian/dmraid2mdadm.cfg: Only append to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT one
diff -Nru mdadm-3.3/debian/source_mdadm.py mdadm-3.3/debian/source_mdadm.py
--- mdadm-3.3/debian/source_mdadm.py	2014-07-16 08:02:56.000000000 -0700
+++ mdadm-3.3/debian/source_mdadm.py	2016-05-18 16:18:42.000000000 -0700
@@ -1,17 +1,18 @@
 '''apport package hook for mdadm
 
-(c) 2009-2012 Canonical Ltd.
+(c) 2009-2016 Canonical Ltd.
 Author: Steve Beattie <sbeattie@ubuntu.com>
 
 Based on the ideas in debian's /usr/share/bug/mdadm/script
 '''
 
 from apport.hookutils import *
-from os import path
+import os
 import re
 import glob
 import gzip
 import subprocess
+import sys
 
 def get_initrd_files(pattern):
     '''Extract listing of files from the current initrd which match a regex.
@@ -21,13 +22,16 @@
     (_, _, release, _, _) = os.uname()
     try:
         fd = gzip.GzipFile('/boot/initrd.img-' + release, 'rb')
+        # universal_newlines needs to be False here as we're passing
+        # binary data from gzip into cpio, which means we'll need to
+        # decode the bytes into strings later when reading the output
         cpio = subprocess.Popen(['cpio', '-t'], close_fds=True, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT,
                                 stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
-                                universal_newlines=True)
+                                universal_newlines=False)
     except OSError as e:
         return 'Error: ' + str(e)
 
-    out = cpio.communicate(fd.read())[0]
+    out = cpio.communicate(fd.read())[0].decode(sys.stdout.encoding, errors='replace')
     if cpio.returncode != 0:
        return 'Error: command %s failed with exit code %i %' % (
            'cpio', cpio.returncode, out)