diff --git a/doc/source/cli/nova.rst b/doc/source/cli/nova.rst
index 75f6ee90e..eada5c693 100644
--- a/doc/source/cli/nova.rst
+++ b/doc/source/cli/nova.rst
@@ -1177,6 +1177,33 @@ nova console-log
 
 Get console log output of a server.
 
+**Locale encoding issues**
+
+If you encounter an error such as:
+
+.. code-block:: console
+
+  UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position
+
+The solution to these problems is different depending on which locale your
+computer is running in.
+
+For instance, if you have a German Linux machine, you can fix the problem by
+exporting the locale to de_DE.utf-8:
+
+.. code-block:: console
+
+  export LC_ALL=de_DE.utf-8
+  export LANG=de_DE.utf-8
+
+If you are on a US machine, en_US.utf-8 is the encoding of choice. On some
+newer Linux systems, you could also try C.UTF-8 as the locale:
+
+.. code-block:: console
+
+  export LC_ALL=C.UTF-8
+  export LANG=C.UTF-8
+
 **Positional arguments:**
 
 ``<server>``
diff --git a/novaclient/tests/unit/v2/test_shell.py b/novaclient/tests/unit/v2/test_shell.py
index e2297699a..bf7a86674 100644
--- a/novaclient/tests/unit/v2/test_shell.py
+++ b/novaclient/tests/unit/v2/test_shell.py
@@ -3553,6 +3553,12 @@ class ShellTest(utils.TestCase):
         self.run_command('availability-zone-list')
         self.assert_called('GET', '/os-availability-zone/detail')
 
+    def test_console_log(self):
+        out = self.run_command('console-log --length 20 1234')[0]
+        self.assert_called('POST', '/servers/1234/action',
+                           body={'os-getConsoleOutput': {'length': '20'}})
+        self.assertIn('foo', out)
+
     def test_server_security_group_add(self):
         self.run_command('add-secgroup sample-server testgroup')
         self.assert_called('POST', '/servers/1234/action',