ego boot update fails UnicodeDecodeError

[junker00627]

I update every 2nd or 3rd week, if an error i wait a week n try again. This issue has been ongoing a month or so. Have googled a lot and read these forums but at a loss how to fix it. A really old kernel still boots from menu but two recent ones do not. ie ego boot update has failed.  is "manual" grub cmd line available ?

 # ego boot update
ERROR: Ego encountered an unexpected error: UnicodeDecodeError
ERROR: Full traceback written to /tmp/ego-traceback-23011.txt.

# cat /tmp/ego-traceback-23011.txt
'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x94 in position 1494: invalid start byteTraceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/ego", line 120, in <module>
    EgoModule.run_ego_module(action, econfig, args, VERSION)
  File "/usr/share/ego/python/ego/module.py", line 110, in run_ego_module
    ego_module(*args)
  File "/usr/share/ego/python/ego/module.py", line 95, in __call__
    self.handle()
  File "/usr/share/ego/modules/boot.ego", line 256, in handle
    handler()
  File "/usr/share/ego/modules/boot.ego", line 224, in update_action
    boot_menu = BootLoaderMenu(self.get_extension(self.boot_options), self.boot_config)
  File "/usr/share/ego/modules/boot.ego", line 148, in get_extension
    self._ext = self.ext_module.getExtension(self.boot_config, self.config, boot_options, self)
  File "/usr/share/ego/python/funtoo/boot/extensions/grub.py", line 16, in getExtension
    return GRUBExtension(boot_config, config, boot_options, ego_module)
  File "/usr/share/ego/python/funtoo/boot/extensions/grub.py", line 23, in __init__
    super().__init__(boot_config, config, boot_options, ego_module)
  File "/usr/share/ego/python/funtoo/boot/extension.py", line 29, in __init__
    self.resolver = Resolver(boot_config, config, boot_options, ego_module)
  File "/usr/share/ego/python/funtoo/boot/resolver.py", line 48, in __init__
    self.fstabinfo = fstabInfo(self.config.root_path)
  File "/usr/share/ego/python/funtoo/boot/helper.py", line 18, in __init__
    for line in fn.readlines():
  File "/usr/lib/python-exec/python3.7/../../../lib/python3.7/codecs.py", line 322, in decode
    (result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x94 in position 1494: invalid start byte

# locale
LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_US.utf8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="en_US.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_US.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8"
LC_ALL=

have tried various 'LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 ego boot update' 'LC_ALL="en_US.utf8" ego boot update' 'LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8"  ego boot update' but am missing what file it is choking on. pls advise.