Okay so this explains everything: in my case the fault was not about special characters in files or filenames but of error messages. I executed Deja Dup / Duplicity in a localized environment and got an error. If the *error message* contains special characters the response in the view won't show the real message at all. Instead the error message will cause the encoding exception.
In my case it was: […] DUPLICITY: . File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/duplicity/backends/giobackend.py", line 124, in __copy_file DUPLICITY: . None, self.__copy_progress, None) DUPLICITY: . Error: g-io-error-quark: Fehler beim Senden von Daten: Datenübergabe unterbrochen (broken pipe) (44) DUPLICITY: . […] So it seems that the error could be everything. As long as it contains special characters it will lead to the encoding issue. In my case switching the locale showed the real cause in the GUI. I hope this information helps someone else too. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1736164 Title: deja-dup/duplicity backup fails with UnicodeDecodeError To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/deja-dup/+bug/1736164/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs