'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 - Update 2.2.0p35.cee

Troubleshooting
1

CMK version: 2.2.0p35.cee
OS version: RHEL 8.10

Error message:
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host1.domain: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte

Hi everyone,
We have just updated our development environment from version 2.2.0p21.cee to 2.2.0p35.cee.
In doing so, quite a few messages of the following appeared:

-| 13/27 Convert persisted sections...
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host1.domain: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host2.domain: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host3.domain: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host4.domain: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host5.domain: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host6.domain: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte
-| Skipping conversion of /omd/sites/rsite2/var/check_mk/persisted/host7.domaine: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x80 in position 0: invalid start byte
...
...
...
-|  14/27 Cleanup version specific caches...

Otherwise, the update went smoothly and the environment could also be started without error. Can someone tell me what these errors mean and whether action is needed here?
If I understand correctly, then there is inventory data in the files, is that correct?

We have >5000 hosts in production, and we are now concerned that we will receive thousands of error messages during the update. We would like to avoid this, but we don’t know how.

Kind regards,
Christian

2

This is not the answer you want to hear, but from the top of my mind, you can delete the faulty files, and they will be re-created. But you should test this first, as I am not entirely certain what the files contain (and I have no time to double-check).

3

Hi @robin.gierse , thanks for the feedback.
We just left the files as they were. When we updated from p35 to p36 a few days later, the errors didn’t come back. It will be very unpleasant in production if we receive hundreds of warnings during the update, but apparently you can just ignore them and don’t have to do anything afterwards.

4

persisted files should contain all section data that has a “persist” inside the section header. Normally this is for instance HW/SW inventory data. But can also be other agent output that has this type header.

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