From bug 4246, comment #12: Also, non-ascii usernames does not work on RHEL6 now. Traceback from vsmserver: 2012-05-29 20:32:47 ERROR vsmserver: Unhandled XMLRPC exception: <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe5' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128) Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/async.py", line 112, in iii11 obj . handle_read_event ( ) File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/asyncore.py", line 428, in handle_read_event self.handle_read() File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/asynchat.py", line 140, in handle_read self.found_terminator() File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/xmlrpc.py", line 526, in found_terminator self . handle_request ( ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/xmlrpc.py", line 540, in handle_request self . handle_method ( ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/vsmserverchannel.py", line 109, in handle_method self . params ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/handler_getpublicsessioninfo.py", line 16, in handle IiII1IiiIiI1 = pwd . getpwnam ( IiII1IiiIiI1 ) . pw_name UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe5' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128) If I fix this, I get the same in vsmagent: 2012-05-29 20:01:57 INFO vsmagent: VSM Agent version 3.4.0 build 3508 started 2012-05-29 20:01:57 INFO vsmagent: My public hostname is 10.47.252.218 2012-05-29 20:01:57 WARNING vsmagent: Couldn't lookup host rhel6base 2012-05-29 20:32:04 ERROR vsmagent: Unhandled XMLRPC exception: <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe5' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128) Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/async.py", line 112, in iii11 obj . handle_read_event ( ) File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/asyncore.py", line 428, in handle_read_event self.handle_read() File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/asynchat.py", line 140, in handle_read self.found_terminator() File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/xmlrpc.py", line 526, in found_terminator self . handle_request ( ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/xmlrpc.py", line 540, in handle_request self . handle_method ( ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/vsmagentchannel.py", line 103, in handle_method self . params ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/handler_reqsession.py", line 52, in handle self . check_old_client ( ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/handler_reqsession.py", line 64, in check_old_client self . check_valid_user ( ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/vsm/handler_reqsession.py", line 69, in check_valid_user self . pwent = pwd . getpwnam ( locale_encode ( self . username ) ) File "/opt/thinlinc/modules/thinlinc/ctccommon.py", line 345, in locale_encode return s . encode ( O00O0oOO00O00 ) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xe5' in position 0: ordinal not in range(128) Although the problem here was that VSM was started with the wrong locale, it shouldn't crash anyway, but instead give a sane error message.
Unsure if this is relevant anymore. With the switch to Python 3 the decoding is done by the system library, not us. Will have to test exactly what it does for this scenario though.
*** Bug 5926 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***