This is a short note to explain a problem I've found and its solution, maybe it could be useful to others.

Problem description¶

When browsing a subversion repository if a folder name contains UTF-8 characters I can't browse the directory contents.

Reason¶

After looking at the redmine logs I found that my redmine's mongrel-cluster (which is running on a Debian GNU/Linux system) was using the C system locale, which uses the ANSI_X3.4-1968 charmap, and the subversion client was unable to process the UTF-8 characters.

Solution¶

Execute redmine under a system locale that supports UTF-8.

I'm using the mongrel-cluster package that comes with Debian and my solution has been to create the /etc/default/mongrel-cluster with the following content:

export LANG="es_ES.utf-8"

You can test if the locale is defined and works executing the command:

LANG=es_ES.utf-8 locale charmap

Note that if your system locale supports UTF-8 probably you don't need that, but on servers I usually leave the default locale as C and set it when needed.