I also have been experiencing this same issue since puppet version 3.3.0-1 (latest) as well as with RC2 in the devel repo. With the previous version of 3.2.4-1 this behaviour was not present.
After doing some testing/research the other day, I found that if you force locales to en_US.UTF-8 before you run, the problem goes away (see below). [simon@ns2(~)> sudo puppet agent --test [sudo] password for simon: Info: Retrieving plugin Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/memorysize_raw.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/augeasversion.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/root_home.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/puppet_vardir.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/facter_dot_d.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/etcpasswd.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/etcgroup.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/isp.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/concat_basedir.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/memoryfree_raw.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/country.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/pe_version.rb Info: Caching catalog for ns2.example.net Info: Applying configuration version '1380622806' *Error: Could not prefetch package provider 'apt': invalid byte sequence in US-ASCII* Notice: Finished catalog run in 16.36 seconds [simon@ns2(~)> export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 [simon@ns2(~)> export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 [simon@ns2(~)> sudo puppet agent --test Info: Retrieving plugin Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/memorysize_raw.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/augeasversion.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/root_home.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/puppet_vardir.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/facter_dot_d.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/etcpasswd.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/etcgroup.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/isp.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/concat_basedir.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/memoryfree_raw.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/country.rb Info: Loading facts in /var/lib/puppet/lib/facter/pe_version.rb Info: Caching catalog for ns2.example.net Info: Applying configuration version '1380622806' Notice: Finished catalog run in 14.81 seconds HTH, Regards, Simon On 1 October 2013 20:39, Peter Berghold <salty.cowd...@gmail.com> wrote: > Now I'm really confused... I use emacs and vi exclusively and neither of > those should be US-ASCII. This leads me to wonder which file. Is it the > provider itself or ??? > > > > On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 2:57 PM, Ayers, Mike > <mike_ay...@cable.comcast.com>wrote: > >> > From: puppet-users@googlegroups.com [mailto:puppet- >> > us...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peter Berghold >> >> > What does "Could not prefetch package provider 'apt': invalid byte >> > sequence in US-ASCII" mean exactly? This started showing up in the logs >> > of some of my servers... >> >> If a file is being interpreted as US-ASCII, then it is expected >> to have no characters with the high bit set. If you edited any source >> files with an Unicode editor, it may have changed some of your punctuatiuon >> to fancy Unicode versions of that punctuation (e.g. a pair of quotes to >> "left quote" and "right quote"), which the interpreter would not understand. >> >> Blind stab: If you save a file as type "UTF-8" on Windows, a BOM >> will be inserted as the first character in the file. Make sure you save as >> ASCII. >> >> >> HTH, >> >> Mike >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Puppet Users" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > > > > -- > > Peter L. Berghold salty.cowd...@gmail.com > > http://blog.berghold.net > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Puppet Users" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
