[Reportbug-maint] Bug#612712: reportbug complains about unicode conversion error

[Michael Tokarev]

Package: reportbug
Version: 4.12.6
Severity: important

When filing bugeports when some non-ascii locales are in
effect - for example, Russian ru_RU.UTF-8 (default for ru),
reportbug complains about unicode conversion errors and
aborts, like this:

---- cut ----
$ reportbug jabberd14
Warning: no reportbug configuration found.  Proceeding in novice mode.
Detected character set: UTF-8
Please change your locale if this is incorrect.

Using 'Michael Tokarev <mjt at tls.msk.ru>' as your from address.
Getting status for jabberd14...
[...]
(1-12/12) Is the bug you found listed above [y|N|b|m|r|q|s|f|?]? 
Maintainer for jabberd14 is 'Miguel Landaeta <miguel at miguel.cc>'.
Looking up dependencies of jabberd14...
Getting changed configuration files...
*** WARNING: The following configuration files have been modified:
/etc/default/jabberd14 Send modified configuration files [Y|n|d|?]? n
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/reportbug", line 2098, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/bin/reportbug", line 1045, in main
    return iface.user_interface()
  File "/usr/bin/reportbug", line 1733, in user_interface
    conftext = conftext + u'%s %s\n' % (f, confinfo[f])
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xd0 in position 11: ordinal not in range(128)

$ echo $LANG
ru_RU.UTF-8
---- cut ----

It works only when explicitly unsetting $LANG.

Now, it may be python bug (2.6), and it may be
related to #539736

But in any case, the problem makes it difficult to
submit _any_ bugreport for a Russian user of Debian
Sueeze, -- yes, more experienced users will be able
to figure out that it'll work after resetting $LANG,
but others wont...  That's why Severity is set to
important.

Thanks!

-- Package-specific info:

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-i686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=, LC_CTYPE= (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages reportbug depends on:
ii  apt                     0.8.10.3         Advanced front-end for dpkg
ii  python                  2.6.6-3+squeeze5 interactive high-level object-orie
ii  python-reportbug        4.12.6           Python modules for interacting wit

reportbug recommends no packages.

Versions of packages reportbug suggests:
pn  debconf-utils                <none>      (no description available)
ii  debsums                      2.0.48+nmu3 tool for verification of installed
pn  dlocate                      <none>      (no description available)
pn  emacs22-bin-common | emacs23 <none>      (no description available)
ii  file                         5.04-5      Determines file type using "magic"
ii  gnupg                        1.4.10-4    GNU privacy guard - a free PGP rep
ii  postfix [postfix]            2.6.5-tls0  Postfix Mail Transfer Agent
pn  python-gtk2                  <none>      (no description available)
pn  python-gtkspell              <none>      (no description available)
pn  python-urwid                 <none>      (no description available)
pn  python-vte                   <none>      (no description available)
pn  xdg-utils                    <none>      (no description available)

-- no debconf information