diff --git a/.gitlab-ci.yml b/.gitlab-ci.yml
index 82d4647ed7..c9c0de6789 100644
--- a/.gitlab-ci.yml
+++ b/.gitlab-ci.yml
@@ -3,8 +3,12 @@ services:
   - mysql:latest
   - postgres
 before_script:
+  - echo "LC_ALL=\"en_US.UTF-8\"" >> /etc/default/locale
+  - locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
+  - update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8
+  - export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
   - apt-get update -qq
-  - apt-get install -qq python-dev python-pip gcc gnupg1 tesseract-ocr tesseract-ocr-deu ghostscript libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libtiff-dev poppler-utils libreoffice
+  - apt-get install -qq curl python-dev python-pip gcc gnupg1 tesseract-ocr tesseract-ocr-deu ghostscript libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libtiff-dev poppler-utils libreoffice
 variables:
   POSTGRES_DB: "mayan_edms"
   POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "postgres"
@@ -16,7 +20,7 @@ test:mysql:
   - pip install -r requirements/testing.txt
   - pip install mysql-python
   - apt-get install -qq mysql-client
-  - mysql -h"$MYSQL_PORT_3306_TCP_ADDR" -P"$MYSQL_PORT_3306_TCP_PORT" -uroot -p"$MYSQL_ENV_MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD" -e "ALTER DATABASE $MYSQL_DATABASE CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;"
+  - mysql -h"$MYSQL_PORT_3306_TCP_ADDR" -P"$MYSQL_PORT_3306_TCP_PORT" -uroot -p"$MYSQL_ENV_MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD" -e "set global character_set_server=utf8mb4;"
   - coverage run manage.py runtests --settings=mayan.settings.testing.gitlab-ci.db_mysql --nomigrations
   - bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/codecov/codecov-bash/master/codecov) -t $CODECOV_TOKEN
   tags:
diff --git a/mayan/apps/common/tests/mixins.py b/mayan/apps/common/tests/mixins.py
index 385ec24de6..9140288b49 100644
--- a/mayan/apps/common/tests/mixins.py
+++ b/mayan/apps/common/tests/mixins.py
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 from __future__ import unicode_literals
 
+import glob
 import os
 
 import psutil
@@ -32,22 +33,42 @@ class ContentTypeCheckMixin(object):
 
 
 class TempfileCheckMixin(object):
+    # Ignore the jvmstat instrumentation and GitLab's CI .config files
+    ignore_globs = ('hsperfdata_*', '.config')
+
     def _get_temporary_entries(self):
-        return os.listdir(setting_temporary_directory.value)
+        ignored_result = []
+
+        # Expand globs by joining the temporary directory and then flattening
+        # the list of lists into a single list
+        for item in self.ignore_globs:
+            ignored_result.extend(
+                glob.glob(
+                    os.path.join(setting_temporary_directory.value, item)
+                )
+            )
+
+        # Remove the path and leave only the expanded filename
+        ignored_result = map(lambda x: os.path.split(x)[-1], ignored_result)
+
+        return set(
+            os.listdir(setting_temporary_directory.value)
+        ) - set(ignored_result)
 
     def setUp(self):
         super(TempfileCheckMixin, self).setUp()
-        self._temporary_entries = self._get_temporary_entries()
+        self._temporary_items = self._get_temporary_entries()
 
     def tearDown(self):
-        for temporary_entry in self._get_temporary_entries():
-            self.assertFalse(
-                temporary_entry not in self._temporary_entries,
-                msg='Orphan temporary file. The number of temporary file and '
-                'directories at the start and at the end of the test are not the '
-                'same.'
+        final_temporary_items = self._get_temporary_entries()
+        self.assertEqual(
+            self._temporary_items, final_temporary_items,
+            msg='Orphan temporary file. The number of temporary files and/or '
+            'directories at the start and at the end of the test are not the '
+            'same. Orphan entries: {}'.format(
+                ','.join(final_temporary_items-self._temporary_items)
             )
-
+        )
         super(TempfileCheckMixin, self).tearDown()