Description of problem:
yum update crashes with the message

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 123: ordinal not in range(128)

The problem persists even after I performed

yum clean all

See additional info for the complete traceback yum printed on the console.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

[root@localhost tv]# yum --version
3.2.24
  Installiert: rpm-4.7.1-3.fc11.i586 am 2009-11-04 21:37
  Gebaut    : Fedora Project am 2009-10-08 09:53
  Übermittelt: Panu Matilainen <pmatilai> am 2009-10-08 12:00

  Installiert: yum-3.2.24-2.fc11.noarch am 2009-10-10 13:26
  Gebaut    : Fedora Project am 2009-09-21 19:27
  Übermittelt: Seth Vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> am 2009-09-21 12:00

  Installiert: yum-metadata-parser-1.1.2-12.fc11.i586 am 2009-08-16 11:17
  Gebaut    : Fedora Project am 2009-02-25 18:45
  Übermittelt: Fedora Release Engineering <rel-eng.org> am 2009-02-25 22:00


How reproducible:
100%

Steps to Reproduce:
1. yum update
2.
3.
  
Actual results:
yum exits after printing an error message and a traceback (see additional info)

Expected results:
yum should update the installed packages to the latest version

Additional info:
Might this be related to Issue 539904?

Here is the complete traceback:

[root@localhost tv]# yum update
Geladene Plugins: dellsysidplugin2, refresh-packagekit
adobe-linux-i386                                                   |  951 B     00:00     
adobe-linux-i386/primary                                           |  12 kB     00:00     
adobe-linux-i386                                                                    17/17
fedora/metalink                                                    |  29 kB     00:00     
fedora                                                             | 3.8 kB     00:00     
fedora/primary_db                                                  | 8.4 MB     00:14     
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 311, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 180, in main
    result, resultmsgs = base.doCommands()
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 349, in doCommands
    self._getTs(needTsRemove)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 100, in _getTs
    self._getTsInfo(remove_only)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/depsolve.py", line 111, in _getTsInfo
    pkgSack = self.pkgSack
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 702, in <lambda>
    pkgSack = property(fget=lambda self: self._getSacks(),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 538, in _getSacks
    self.repos.populateSack(which=repos)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/repos.py", line 277, in populateSack
    sack.populate(repo, mdtype, callback, cacheonly)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 164, in populate
    if self._check_db_version(repo, mydbtype):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 222, in _check_db_version
    return repo._check_db_version(mdtype)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1222, in _check_db_version
    repoXML = self.repoXML
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1386, in <lambda>
    repoXML = property(fget=lambda self: self._getRepoXML(),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1378, in _getRepoXML
    self._loadRepoXML(text=self)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1368, in _loadRepoXML
    return self._groupLoadRepoXML(text, ["primary"])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1351, in _groupLoadRepoXML
    if self._commonLoadRepoXML(text):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1197, in _commonLoadRepoXML
    result = self._getFileRepoXML(local, text)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 976, in _getFileRepoXML
    cache=self.http_caching == 'all')
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 797, in _getFile
    result = self.grab.urlgrab(misc.to_utf8(relative), local,
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 498, in <lambda>
    grab = property(lambda self: self._getgrab())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 493, in _getgrab
    self._setupGrab()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 482, in _setupGrab
    self._grab = mgclass(self._grabfunc, self.urls,
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 655, in <lambda>
    urls = property(fget=lambda self: self._geturls(),
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 652, in _geturls
    self._baseurlSetup()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 606, in _baseurlSetup
    mirrorurls.extend(self._getMirrorList())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1625, in _getMirrorList
    print "Could not retrieve mirrorlist %s error was\n%s" % (url, e)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/codecs.py", line 351, in write
    data, consumed = self.encode(object, self.errors)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 123: ordinal not in range(128)