UnicodeDecodeError when adding a ppa with add-apt-repository

My internet connection was a little bit unstable when I did this. The bug may be releted to printing out an localized error message (DNS error or timeout)

are you behind a proxy?

Guillaume, this does affect me and I am behind a proxy.

If I run as root and unset LANG I get:
root@transwarp:/tmp# add-apt-repository ppa:deb-thumbnailer-team/ppa
Error reading https://launchpad.net/api/1.0/~deb-thumbnailer-team/+archive/ppa: <urlopen error [Errno 113] No route to host>

I am behind a proxy, but I have entered my proxy settings in System / Network Proxy Server and "applied them for the whole system". Since wget works, they should be correct.

It is also happening to me in Ubuntu 10.10 and it seems to happen in computers that need proxy to access internet. I've configured my proxy in Gnome and set it to be applied system-wide. All applications are working properly with the proxy (like aptitude) but add-apt-repository gives the same error.

The Problem is, that there is an exception with the following (german) message:

<urlopen error [Errno 110] Die Wartezeit für die Verbindung ist abgelaufen>

(which is "connection timed out")
As the message contains an german umlaut "ü", there is an follow up exception

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 42: ordinal not in range(128)

Why does this python code work in ascii-mode?

Same problem on Ubuntu 11.04, when adding a repo :

# add-apt-repository ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa
Exception in thread Thread-1:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 552, in __bootstrap_inner
    self.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py", line 63, in run
    self.add_ppa_signing_key(self.ppa_path)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py", line 93, in add_ppa_signing_key
    print "Error reading %s: %s" % (lp_url, e)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 42: ordinal not in range(128)

I'am behind a proxy :

# cat /etc/apt/apt.conf
ACQUIRE {
http::proxy "http://172.16.0.63:8080"
}

The locales are :
# locale
LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=fr:en
LC_CTYPE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES=fr_FR.UTF-8
LC_PAPER="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Is this still an issue with Oneiric? I have tried with the latest development issue, and adding the PPAs listed in this bug works as expected, so I would say this has been fixed and should be set as such.
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[Expired for software-properties (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]