Can not create new users/mailboxes - Pykolab Umlaute errors !

[Matthias Busch]

Hey,

Kolab 16 on Debian 8

Today I needed to add a new user. I use the kolab-webadmin for that. 
There was no error. When the user tried to login to webmail, I got the 
error that there is no mailbox.

kolab lm shows this to be true, the mailbox was not created. I tried to 
create the user with kolab add-user, again, there is no mailbox.
(I also tried to create the mailbox by hand, which I may have done 
incorrectly because it didddnt work as expected. But this shall not be 
the issue here)

I looked through the logfiles and came upon the following error:


2017-10-04 11:36:03,505 pykolab.utils WARNING Could not translate 
Xöxxxxx.Xxxxxxxx at xxxxxxxxxx.de using locale de_DE
2017-10-04 11:36:03,506 pykolab.auth ERROR An error occured using 
_paged_search: UnicodeEncodeError('ascii', 
u'(&(|(mail=x\xf6xxxxxx.xxxxxxx at xxxxxxxxxxx.de)(alias=x\xf6xxxxxx.xxxxx at xxxxxxxxx.de)(nsuniqueid=x\xf6xxxxxx.xxxxxxxx at xxxxxxxx.de))(!(nsuniqueid=27711d01-601d11e4-afec87db-51920d94)))', 
11, 12, 'ordinal not in range(128)')
2017-10-04 11:36:03,507 pykolab.auth ERROR Traceback (most recent call 
last):
   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pykolab/auth/ldap/__init__.py", line 
3065, in _search
     secondary_domains
   File "<string>", line 10, in <module>
   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pykolab/auth/ldap/__init__.py", line 
2842, in _paged_search
     callback(entry=_result_data)
   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pykolab/auth/ldap/__init__.py", line 
2676, in _synchronize_callback
     eval("self._change_none_%s(entry, None)" % (entry['type']))
   File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pykolab/auth/ldap/__init__.py", line 
2186, in _change_none_user
     entry_changes = self.recipient_policy(entry)
   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pykolab/auth/ldap/__init__.py", line 
971, in recipient_policy
     results = self.find_recipient(_primary_mail, entry['id'])
   File 
"/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/pykolab/auth/ldap/__init__.py", line 
747, in find_recipient
     attrsonly=True
   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 552, 
in search_s
     return 
self.search_ext_s(base,scope,filterstr,attrlist,attrsonly,None,None,timeout=self.timeout)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 870, 
in search_ext_s
     return 
self._apply_method_s(SimpleLDAPObject.search_ext_s,*args,**kwargs)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 812, 
in _apply_method_s
     return func(self,*args,**kwargs)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 545, 
in search_ext_s
     msgid = 
self.search_ext(base,scope,filterstr,attrlist,attrsonly,serverctrls,clientctrls,timeout,sizelimit)
   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 541, 
in search_ext
     timeout,sizelimit,
   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ldap/ldapobject.py", line 99, 
in _ldap_call
     result = func(*args,**kwargs)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xf6' in 
position 11: ordinal not in range(128)

(I xxxx'ed the username and domain)

I have a user with an ö in his name. It is not in the uid or email 
address (both use oe instead of ö)

Looking back the error was intruduced in Juli or August when I patched 
the system.

Now, I could think that this problem is unrelated to me being unable to 
create users. But its the best thing I have so far.
Additionally, my test system which does not throw this error lets me 
create users with mailboxes

Is this problem known? is there something I can do? Is a fix announced?

Please help!

Thanks
Matthias