I converted an ikiwiki setup file to YAML as [[documented|tips/yaml_setup_files]]. On my Debian Squeeze system, attempting to build the wiki using the YAML setup file triggers the following error message: YAML::XS::Load Error: The problem: Invalid trailing UTF-8 octet was found at document: 0 usage: ikiwiki [options] source dest ikiwiki --setup configfile Indeed, my setup file contains UTF-8 characters. Deinstalling YAML::XS ([[!debpkg libyaml-libyaml-perl]]) resolves this issue. According to YAML::Any's POD, YAML::Syck is used instead of YAML::XS in this case since it's the best YAML implementaion available on my system. No encoding-related setting is mentionned in YAML::XS' POD. We may consider there is a bug in there. I'll see if it's known / fixed somewhere as soon as I get online. Joey, as a (hopefully) temporary workaround, what do you think of explicitely using YAML::Syck (or whatever other YAML implementation that does not expose this bug) rather than letting YAML::Any pick its preferred one?