diff --git a/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/lxc/lxc_container.py b/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/lxc/lxc_container.py
index 343557f9c09..4994d15a94c 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/lxc/lxc_container.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/modules/cloud/lxc/lxc_container.py
@@ -438,6 +438,7 @@ else:
 from ansible.module_utils.basic import AnsibleModule
 from ansible.module_utils.parsing.convert_bool import BOOLEANS_FALSE, BOOLEANS_TRUE
 from ansible.module_utils.six.moves import xrange
+from ansible.module_utils._text import to_text, to_bytes
 
 
 # LXC_COMPRESSION_MAP is a map of available compression types when creating
@@ -572,7 +573,7 @@ def create_script(command):
     (fd, script_file) = tempfile.mkstemp(prefix='lxc-attach-script')
     f = os.fdopen(fd, 'wb')
     try:
-        f.write(ATTACH_TEMPLATE % {'container_command': command})
+        f.write(to_bytes(ATTACH_TEMPLATE % {'container_command': command}, errors='surrogate_or_strict'))
         f.flush()
     finally:
         f.close()
@@ -722,7 +723,7 @@ class LxcContainerManagement(object):
 
         container_config_file = self.container.config_file_name
         with open(container_config_file, 'rb') as f:
-            container_config = f.readlines()
+            container_config = to_text(f.read(), errors='surrogate_or_strict').splitlines()
 
         # Note used ast literal_eval because AnsibleModule does not provide for
         # adequate dictionary parsing.
@@ -763,7 +764,7 @@ class LxcContainerManagement(object):
                 self.container.stop()
 
             with open(container_config_file, 'wb') as f:
-                f.writelines(container_config)
+                f.writelines([to_bytes(line, errors='surrogate_or_strict') for line in container_config])
 
             self.state_change = True
             if container_state == 'running':