Issue #22848 has been updated by Charles Olivier.
This issue seems to only affect the client side.
Additionally, I found a quick fix, which works for me.
I use KVM on Debian 7.2 with Puppet 3 and The Foreman.
My VMs are a mix of Ubuntu and Debian boxes. I use PXE and preseed to install
Issue #22848 has been updated by Charlie Sharpsteen.
Subject changed from Encoding bug in Puppet 3.3.1 when using Ruby 1.9.3 (and
above) to Encoding mis-matches cause package prefetching to fail
Bug #22848: Encoding mis-matches cause package prefetching
