Invalid UTF-8 in ~/.gtk-bookmarks breaks gnome-shell

I'm trying Ubuntu 11.10 AMD64 and I can only log in with the guest user. On the upper right corner, instead of the name, I see [Invalid UTF-8].

When I try other users I get only the wallpaper, as Anders, and I have to reboot.

I can login with my main user on the Ctrl-Alt-F2 console. I see that non-English characters (ñ, ç, é...) are not recognized. Maybe is the ca_ES UTF-8 causing these problems. There is no .gtk-bookmarks file in my home directory.

I changed the directory names of my main user, to get rid of the accents (i changed Públic with Public and so on), and I modified .config/user-dirs.dirs accordingly. No results.

smauleon: This bug report is specifically about problems caused by invalid UTF-8 in the ~/.gtk-bookmarks file. It is 100% reproducible from a clean account in that way, and results in an error message that clearly indicates that invalid UTF-8 is the problem. If you do not have a ~/.gtk-bookmarks file, your problem must be different, so please file a separate bug report.

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

It also affects me, but with a slightly different output (the error occurs in other .js script). I recommend changing the importance to Critical, as it breaks completely the user interface.

    JS ERROR: !!! Exception was: Error: Failed to convert UTF-8 string to JS string: Sequência de bytes inválida na entrada de conversão
    JS ERROR: !!! lineNumber = '0'
    JS ERROR: !!! fileName = '"gjs_throw"'
    JS ERROR: !!! stack = '"("Failed to convert UTF-8 string to JS string: Sequ\xEAncia de bytes inv\xE1lida na entrada de convers\xE3o")@gjs_throw:0
("%a, %e de %b, %R:%S")@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/environment.js:75
()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/dateMenu.js:208
([object Object])@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/dateMenu.js:167
DateMenuButton([object Object])@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/dateMenu.js:44
()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js:948
Panel()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js:887
start()@/usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/main.js:213
@<main>:1
"'
    JS ERROR: !!! message = '"Failed to convert UTF-8 string to JS string: Sequência de bytes inválida na entrada de conversão"'
Aviso do gerenciador de janelas: Log level 32: Execution of main.js threw exception: Error: Failed to convert UTF-8 string to JS string: Sequência de bytes inválida na entrada de conversão
Dropbox isn't running!
Done!
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita Dark/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:51: Murrine configuration option "scrollbar_color" is no longer supported and will be ignored.
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita Dark/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:61: Murrine configuration option "gradients" is no longer supported and will be ignored.
/usr/share/themes/Adwaita Dark/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:61: Murrine configuration option "hilight_ratio" will be deprecated in future releases. Please use "highlight_shade" instead.
gnome-session[4028]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
gnome-session[4028]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....

I had the same problem. The interesting thing is in my laptop I've never had that problem and I had in my work desktop. Well, looking for informations I discovered that if I set the enviroment variable LC_ALL to my "pt_BR.UTF-8", the problem is solved.
I guess the method "toLocaleFormat(dateFormat)" is taking the wrong locale. Previously my LANGUAGE enviroment variables were:

LANG=pt_BR
LANGUAGE=pt_BR:pt:en
LC_CTYPE="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

The variable LC_ALL has the effects: "This variable determines the values for all locale categories. The value of the LC_ALL environment variable has precedence over any of the other environment variables starting with LC_ (LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_MONETARY, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME) and the LANG environment variable".

Well, I hope this helps all.

EOL reached for that serie https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases