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just ran gem update on a light use server machine that hadn't been updated in a while... and am getting loads of 'unable to convert "\x??" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for..." errors. Included is an except from console. anyone know what's going on?

$ sudo gem update
Installing ri documentation for railties-3.0.4...
Installing ri documentation for minitest-2.0.2...
Installing ri documentation for net-ssh-2.1.0...
unable to convert "\xE7" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for lib/net/ssh/authentication/pageant.rb, skipping
unable to convert "\xC3" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for lib/net/ssh/buffered_io.rb, skipping
unable to convert "\xC3" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for lib/net/ssh/service/forward.rb, skipping
unable to convert "\xC3" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for THANKS.rdoc, skipping
unable to convert "\xC3" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for CHANGELOG.rdoc, skipping
Installing ri documentation for rails-3.0.4...
file 'lib' not found
Installing ri documentation for rails3-generators-0.17.4...
unable to convert "\xC3" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for README.rdoc, skipping
Installing ri documentation for rdoc-3.5.3...
unable to convert U+201D from UTF-8 to US-ASCII for lib/rdoc/text.rb, skipping
unable to convert "\xC3" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for History.txt, skipping
Installing ri documentation for rspec-core-2.5.1...
unable to convert "\xC2" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for lib/rspec/core/subject.rb, skipping
Installing ri documentation for rspec-expectations-2.5.0...
unable to convert "\xC2" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII for lib/rspec/matchers.rb, skipping
Installing ri documentation for rspec-mocks-2.5.0...
Installing ri documentation for rspec-2.5.0...
Installing ri documentation for rspec-rails-2.5.0...
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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
56

I have had a similar issue on my Mac OS X using iTerm2 instead of the default OS X Terminal.app. The LC_CTYPE is not set properly by iTerm2, once I have added export LC_CTYPE="utf-8" to ~/.bash_profile the gem installation goes smoothly.

note: of course you can add the export to any of the other profile files

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7
  • This resolved the problem for me. Occurred when connecting to my Mac remotely using Panic’s Prompt SSH client.
    – Daniel
    Commented Apr 16, 2012 at 21:30
  • export LC_CTYPE="utf-8" failed on Fedora 19 with error: -bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (utf-8): No such file or directory Any idea why? Thanks
    – mkelley33
    Commented Oct 27, 2013 at 3:27
  • 2
    Also, I should add that export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 worked :)
    – mkelley33
    Commented Oct 27, 2013 at 3:28
  • Be sure to run sudo gem update after adding this do your ~/.bash_profile script if you're doing a gem install. The issue persisted when installing until I ran that first.
    – Justin Fortier
    Commented Jun 18, 2015 at 20:47
  • I have the issue, even though I already am running the default OS X Terminall.app.
    – Nicolas Miari
    Commented Nov 30, 2015 at 2:43
18

The combination of Daniel and werm's answers worked for me, once I also unset LC_ALL. I ended up with this:

export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
unset LC_ALL
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3
  • thanks this was the correct answer for me on iTerm2 and a standard 10.04 ubuntu install with some locale problems!
    – Richard Frank
    Commented Dec 20, 2012 at 15:59
  • On Fedora 19 using gnome-terminal this mostly worked except for one error: unable to convert "\xD0" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 for lib/redcarpet.so, skipping I'm not sure why this happened, but any further advice would be most awesomely welcomed!
    – mkelley33
    Commented Oct 27, 2013 at 3:25
  • This fixed my unable to convert "\xCA" from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 for redcarpet
    – Bae
    Commented Dec 18, 2014 at 12:20
5

Try running locale in your SSH terminal. This problem just started popping up for me. When I do locale I get this:

LANG=C
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_PAPER="C"
LC_NAME="C"
LC_ADDRESS="C"
LC_TELEPHONE="C" 
LC_MEASUREMENT="C"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="C"
LC_ALL=

The only fix I know of is to type LANG=en_US.UTF-8 every time I login through SSH.

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1
  • 2
    Encountered this on a Solaris 10 machine that I'm trying to install ruby and rubygems on. In my ~/.bashrc file, I put LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 export LC_CTYPE LANG. That made the problems disappear for me.
    – mj1531
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 17:45
5

I was getting this same issue w/ installing another gem and didn't know how to get around it even after adding export LC_CTYPE="utf-8" to my ~/.bash_profile. It wasn't until I ran sudo gem update after that was able to install the gem.

Note that I wanted to contribute this to the original accepted answer, however not enough points yet. :( Nonetheless I hope this helps someone else.

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