Gem update: unable to convert "\xE7" to UTF-8 in conversion from ASCII-8BIT to UTF-8 to US-ASCII

Question

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...

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.