"/var/run/utmp: No such file or directory" when using do-release-upgrade

Question

Linux newbie here. I recently ordered my first (unmanaged) VPS running Ubuntu 10.04. I successfully managed to upgrade to 12.04 via SSH connection (PuTTY) but have some trouble going to 12.10 release now. This is exactly what I did:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot

sudo do-release-upgrade -c

Checking for a new Ubuntu release.
New release '12.10' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

sudo do-release-upgrade

After a few seconds the setup process stops because of '/var/run/utmp' not being found:

root@vm3593:~# sudo do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
Get:1 Upgrade tool signature [198 B]
Get:2 Upgrade tool [1200 kB]
Fetched 1200 kB in 0s (0 B/s)
authenticate 'quantal.tar.gz' against 'quantal.tar.gz.gpg'
extracting 'quantal.tar.gz'
/var/run/utmp: No such file or directory

So I tried:

cd /
sudo cat /dev/null > /var/run/utmp
sudo reboot

and it fixed the missing file issue (yay!).

Unfortunately, the setup still gets stuck with the following error(s):

File
"/tmp/update-manager-ZdDbE2/DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeController.py",
line 1616, in fullUpgrade
if not self.prepare():
File
"/tmp/update-manager-ZdDbE2/DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeController.py",
line 429, in prepare
self._sshMagic()
File
"/tmp/update-manager-ZdDbE2/DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeController.py",
line 299, in _sshMagic
"Do you want to continue?") % port)

File "/tmp/update-manager-ZdDbE2/DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeViewText.py",
line 216, in askYesNoQuestion
res = sys.stdin.readline().decode(ENCODING, "backslashreplace")

TypeError: decode() argument 1 must be string, not None
=== Command detached from window (Sat Aug  3 20:26:10 2013) ===
=== Command terminated with exit status 1 (Sat Aug  3 20:26:10 2013) ===

What can I do?

Please keep in mind that I'm absolutely new to this.

Solution

Quote from post:

Upgrading now... (yay!) Try:

sudo LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 sudo do-release-upgrade

or

export LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 sudo do-release-upgrade

The former did it for me.

I'm posting this as the answer, just until the user creates their own answer and marks it as such.