The SHOW VARIABLES LIKE .../SELECT @@/SELECT ... FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VARIABLES
were assuming that all the system variables are in system charset (UTF-8).
However the variables that are settable through command line will have a different
character set (character_set_filesystem).
Fixed the server to remember the correct character set of basedir, datadir, tmpdir,
ssl, plugin_dir, slave_load_tmpdir, innodb variables; init_connect and init_slave 
variables and use it when processing data.