and now yum clean metadata didn't help:

Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in <module>
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 241, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 197, in main
    return exFatal(e)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 75, in exFatal
    logger.critical('\n\n%s', unicode(e))
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 168:
ordinal not in range(128)
[root@hubmaier yum]# 

And the winner is .... tramtararaaaa

[root@hubmaier ~]# yum upgrade -y gtk2-debuginfo
Loaded plugins: allowdowngrade, changelog, downloadonly, protectbase, refresh-
              : packagekit, security, versionlock
Excluding Packages in global exclude list
Finished
Reading version lock configuration
0 packages excluded due to repository protections
Skipping security plugin, no data
Setting up Upgrade Process
Resolving Dependencies
Skipping security plugin, no data
--> Running transaction check
---> Package gtk2-debuginfo.x86_64 0:2.13.0-2.fc10 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size 
=============================================================================
Updating:
 gtk2-debuginfo          x86_64     2.13.0-2.fc10    rawhide-debuginfo  7.6 M

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      0 Package(s)         
Update       1 Package(s)         
Remove       0 Package(s)         

Total size: 7.6 M
Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in <module>
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 241, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 193, in main
    base.doTransaction()
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 405, in doTransaction
    errstring += '  %s\n' % descr 
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 143:
ordinal not in range(128)
[root@hubmaier ~]# rpm -Uvh
/var/cache/yum/rawhide-debuginfo/packages/gtk2-debuginfo-2.13.0-2.fc10.x86_64.rpm 
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
	soubor /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/modules/libferret.so.debug z instalace
gtk2-debuginfo-2.13.0-2.fc10.x86_64 koliduje se souborem z balíčku
gail-debuginfo-1.22.1-1.fc9.x86_64
	soubor /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib64/gtk-2.0/modules/libgail.so.debug z instalace
gtk2-debuginfo-2.13.0-2.fc10.x86_64 koliduje se souborem z balíčku
gail-debuginfo-1.22.1-1.fc9.x86_64
	soubor /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib64/libgailutil.so.18.0.1.debug z instalace
gtk2-debuginfo-2.13.0-2.fc10.x86_64 koliduje se souborem z balíčku
gail-debuginfo-1.22.1-1.fc9.x86_64
[root@hubmaier ~]# 

Of course, there is a bug in gtk2-debuginfo, but yum shouldn't crash on it.

hit the same bug, nope, this one does not resolve it for me. i am on the latest
gtk2-debuginfo already according to yum

[root@mordor ~]# yum upgrade -y gtk2-debuginfo
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up and reading Presto delta metadata
No Presto metadata available for fedora
No Presto metadata available for livna-development
No Presto metadata available for adobe-linux-i386
No Presto metadata available for updates
Setting up Upgrade Process
Could not find update match for gtk2-debuginfo
No Packages marked for Update
[root@mordor ~]# 

I get the same trace when I do a yum update

(In reply to comment #3)
> hit the same bug, nope, this one does not resolve it for me. i am on the latest
> gtk2-debuginfo already according to yum

Then do what I did -- a binary search -- i.e., upgrade all g\* packages, if that
works, upgrade lib\* packages, until you find the package which is broken.

 Can you try changing:

logger.critical('\n\n%s', unicode(e))

...to:

logger.critical('\n\n%s', to_utf8(unicode(e)))

...and you'll need to put a "from misc import to_utf8" at the top of the file.

I am not sure, I can reproduce it here -- after rpm -e gail-debuginfo I have
working yum upgrade. I needed machine to be working, so I fixed it by hand
(well, I wish it was workin -- it is Rawhide, so it is broken, but that's not
your problem ;-)).

These bugs were mostly fixed, so I guess this one can be closed.

Looks like it is still in rawhide as of today. I had to unset LANG and LC_ALL to run "yum upgrade".

What version of yum do you have (yum --version) ... and what does the error look like?

It looks like I can't reproduce it anymore. I guess something was updated by said "yum upgrade" which fixed the problem. I had yum-3.2.19-5.fc10 before the upgrade, now yum-3.2.20-3.fc10.

Sorry for the noise.

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 10 development cycle.
Changing version to '10'.

More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

hopefully.