Python3: UnicodeEncodeError only when run from crontab

Question

first post so be kind please, I have searched a lot around but most things I found are relevant to Python 2.

I have a Python3 script that builds a zip file from a file list; it fails with UnicodeEncodeError only when the script is run from crontab, but it works flawlessly when run from interactive console. I guess there must be something in the environment but I just can't seem to figure out what.

This is the code excerpt:

def zipFileList(self, rootfolder, filelist, zip_file, logger):
    count = 0

    logger.info("Generazione file zip {0}: da {1} files".format(zip_file, len(filelist)))
    zip = zipfile.ZipFile(zip_file, "w", compression=zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)

    for curfile in filelist:
        zip.write(os.path.join(rootfolder, curfile), curfile, zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
        count = count + 1

    zip.close()
    logger.info("Scrittura terminata: {0} files".format(count))

And this is the log output for this code fragment:

2012-07-31 09:10:03,033: root - ERROR - Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.2/zipfile.py", line 365, in _encodeFilenameFlags
  return self.filename.encode('ascii'), self.flag_bits
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position 56-57: ordinal not in range(128)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "XBE.py", line 45, in main
    pam.executeList(logger)
  File "/home/vte/vtebackup/vte41/scripts/ptActivityManager.py", line 62, in executeList
    self.executeActivity(act, logger)
  File "/home/vte/vtebackup/vte41/scripts/ptActivityManager.py", line 71, in executeActivity
    self.exAct_FileBackup(act, logger)
  File "/home/vte/vtebackup/vte41/scripts/ptActivityManager.py", line 112, in exAct_FileBackup
    ptfs.zipFileList(srcfolder, filelist, arcfilename, logger)
  File "/home/vte/vtebackup/vte41/scripts/ptFileManager.py", line 143, in zipFileList
    zip.write(os.path.join(rootfolder, curfile), curfile, zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.2/zipfile.py", line 1115, in write
    self.fp.write(zinfo.FileHeader())
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.2/zipfile.py", line 355, in FileHeader
    filename, flag_bits = self._encodeFilenameFlags()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.2/zipfile.py", line 367, in _encodeFilenameFlags
    return self.filename.encode('utf-8'), self.flag_bits | 0x800
UnicodeEncodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't encode character '\udcc3' in position 56: surrogates not allowed

This is the crontab line:

10 9 * * * /home/vte/vtebackup/vte41/scripts/runbackup.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

And this is the content of runbackup.sh:

#! /bin/bash -l

cd /home/vte/vtebackup/vte41/scripts

/usr/local/bin/python3.2 XBE.py

The file on which the exception happens is always the same, but it doesn't seem to include any non ascii chars:

/var/vhosts/vte41/http_docs/vtecrm41/storage/2012/July/week4/169933_Puccini_Gabriele.tif

OS is Ubuntu Linux LTS 10.04, Python version 3.2 (installed side by side as altinstall with other Python versions). All Python source files have this shebang

#!/usr/bin/env python3.2

as very first line

Can you help me finding what's wrong and how to fix this problem?

Answer 1

A team member found the resolution in a Python bug thread.

The issue was fixed by prepending a LANG directive to the script command:

* * * * * LANG=it_IT.UTF-8 /home/vte/vtebackup/vte41/scripts/runbackup.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

I hope this is useful for others because I got myself scratching my head for a while on this :)