#8078 IPA client install error : UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2
Closed: invalid by rcritten. Opened by slamy.

Request for enhancement

As an IT administrator, I want to enroll an Ubuntu 18.04 so that it will be an IPA client

Issue

A python error while ipa-client-install is working. The exact command is:

sudo ipa-client-install --unattended --ip-address=192.168.4.137 --domain=<my.domain> --realm=<MY.DOMAIN> --hostname=ipaclientlan.my.domain --principal=admin --password=adminpwd --mkhomedir --force-join

The error is:

2019-09-25T08:09:53Z DEBUG The ipa-client-install command failed, exception: UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 1316: ordinal not in range(128)
2019-09-25T08:09:53Z ERROR 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 1316: ordinal not in range(128)

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Setup an IPA server
  2. Install separately Ubuntu 18.04
  3. Enroll Ubuntu 18.04 with ipa-client-install

Actual behavior

Enrollment seems to be ok because kinit is working. Also web UI on IPA server shows Ubuntu 18.04 client enrolled

Expected behavior

No error during enrollment, a positive message at the end

Version/Release/Distribution

IPA server:

ipa-server-4.6.5-11.el7.centos.x86_64
ipa-client-4.6.5-11.el7.centos.x86_64
389-ds-base-1.3.9.1-10.el7.x86_64
pki-ca-10.5.16-3.el7.noarch
krb5-server-1.15.1-37.el7_7.2.x86_64

IPA client:

ii freeipa-client 4.7.0~pre1+git20180411-2ubuntu2
ii freeipa-common 4.7.0~pre1+git20180411-2ubuntu2
ii libipa-hbac0 1.16.1-1ubuntu1.4
ii python-ipaclient 4.7.0~pre1+git20180411-2ubuntu2
ii python-ipaddr 2.2.0-1
ii python-ipaddress 1.0.17-1
ii python-ipalib 4.7.0~pre1+git20180411-2ubuntu2
ii python-libipa-hbac 1.16.1-1ubuntu1.4
ii sssd-ipa 1.16.1-1ubuntu1.4

Additional info:

IPA server is OK.
IPA clients Debian 10 and Centos 7 are OK too

I also tried to set Python3 by default but no luck Python2.7 is in use

Thanks a lot!


Thanks for the detailed report. Could you please attach the client install log from /var/log ? It should contain detailed information and a traceback of the exception.

No problem, log file attached

ipaclient-install.log

Fixed

The problem came from bad caracters in my original /etc/sssd/sssd.conf

Faulty line was:
# uncomment below if the SME is a “iPasserelle”

As you see there are 2 specials double quotes...I guess IPA client install script try to backup the file before making any change in it.

So I deleted these double quotes and the error was gone!

Maybe you could make change in the script to detect and warn about unexpected caracters in original files before trying to make the changes.

Thank you for your investigation so far. You can close the issue.
have a good day

I opened https://pagure.io/SSSD/sssd/issue/4108 since it is SSSD throwing the exception.

Metadata Update from @rcritten:
- Issue close_status updated to: invalid
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

Metadata