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UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 37: ordinal not in range(128) #440

@CorentinWicht

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@CorentinWicht

Dear Support Team,

I am running Kodi 21.2 in Ubuntu 24.04 from the [ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/kodi(https://launchpad.net/~ubuntuhandbook1/+archive/ubuntu/kodi) repository (i.e., the official team-xbmc Kodi PPA team has moved to Flatpak which, by nature, cannot connect to the host OpenVPN binary) I am getting the same error however I try to configure your VPN Manager for OpenVPN add-on (wizard or manually):

2025-11-07 08:35:05.068 T:16768   debug <CSettingsManager>: requested setting (label98) was not found.
2025-11-07 08:35:05.068 T:16768   debug <CSettingsManager>: requested setting (label980) was not found.
2025-11-07 08:35:05.068 T:16768   debug <CSettingsManager>: requested setting (label986) was not found.
2025-11-07 08:35:05.111 T:16768   error <general>: EXCEPTION Thrown (PythonToCppException) : -->Python callback/script returned the following error<--
                                                    - NOTE: IGNORING THIS CAN LEAD TO MEMORY LEAKS!
                                                   Error Type: <class 'UnicodeDecodeError'>
                                                   Error Contents: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 37: ordinal not in range(128)
                                                   Traceback (most recent call last):
                                                     File "/home/kodi/.kodi/addons/service.vpn.manager/connect.py", line 51, in <module>
                                                       connectVPN(str(connection_order), "")
                                                     File "/home/kodi/.kodi/addons/service.vpn.manager/libs/common.py", line 1548, in connectVPN
                                                       if checkVPNCommand(addon) and checkPidofCommand(addon) and checkKillallCommand(addon):
                                                                                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                     File "/home/kodi/.kodi/addons/service.vpn.manager/libs/vpnplatform.py", line 392, in checkKillallCommand
                                                       log_file_lines = log_file.readlines()
                                                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                     File "/usr/lib/python3.12/encodings/ascii.py", line 26, in decode
                                                       return codecs.ascii_decode(input, self.errors)[0]
                                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                                                   UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 37: ordinal not in range(128)
                                                   -->End of Python script error report<--
                                                   
2025-11-07 08:35:05.112 T:16768   debug <general>: onExecutionDone(14, special://home/addons/service.vpn.manager/connect.py)
2025-11-07 08:35:05.113 T:15775   debug <general>: ------ Window Init (DialogNotification.xml) ------

My VPN provider is VPN Unlimited.

The VPN crendentials/.ovpn files and the Ubuntu OpenVPN binary works perfectly because I am able to connect to it from the Catch-up tv & More add-on.

Any idea what's going on?

Best wishes,

C.

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