diff --git a/rhodecode/lib/indexers/daemon.py b/rhodecode/lib/indexers/daemon.py
--- a/rhodecode/lib/indexers/daemon.py
+++ b/rhodecode/lib/indexers/daemon.py
@@ -77,6 +77,8 @@ class WhooshIndexingDaemon(object):
 
         #filter repo list
         if repo_list:
+            #Fix non-ascii repo names to unicode
+            repo_list = map(safe_unicode, repo_list)
             self.filtered_repo_paths = {}
             for repo_name, repo in self.repo_paths.items():
                 if repo_name in repo_list: