bzr: ERROR: exceptions.UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe4 in position 31: ordinal not in range(128)

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/commands.py", line 718, in run_bzr_catch_errors
    return run_bzr(argv)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/commands.py", line 679, in run_bzr
    ret = run(*run_argv)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/commands.py", line 375, in run_argv_aliases
    return self.run(**all_cmd_args)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/builtins.py", line 2210, in run
    reporter=reporter, revprops=properties)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/decorators.py", line 165, in write_locked
    return unbound(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/workingtree_4.py", line 245, in commit
    result = WorkingTree3.commit(self, message, revprops, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/decorators.py", line 165, in write_locked
    return unbound(self, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/mutabletree.py", line 195, in commit
    revprops=revprops, *args, **kwargs)
  File "lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/commit.py", line 323, in commit
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/builtins.py", line 2187, in get_message
    my_message = edit_commit_message(template)
  File "lib/python2.5/site-packages/bzrlib/msgeditor.py", line 131, in edit_commit_message
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/codecs.py", line 631, in next
    return self.reader.next()
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/codecs.py", line 562, in next
    line = self.readline()
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/codecs.py", line 477, in readline
    data = self.read(readsize, firstline=True)
  File "/home/knoppix/local/lib/python2.5/codecs.py", line 424, in read
    newchars, decodedbytes = self.decode(data, self.errors)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe4 in position 31: ordinal not in range(128)

bzr 0.16.0 on python 2.5.1.final.0 (linux2)
arguments: ['/home/knoppix/local/bin/bzr', 'ci', 'somefile.txt']

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