malformed start tag error - Python, BeautifulSoup, and Sipie - Ubuntu 10.04

Question

I just installed python, mplayer, beautifulsoup and sipie to run Sirius on my Ubuntu 10.04 machine. I followed some docs that seem straightforward, but am encountering some issues. I'm not that familiar with Python, so this may be out of my league.

I was able to get everything installed, but then running sipie gives this:

/usr/bin/Sipie/Sipie/Config.py:12: DeprecationWarning: the md5 module is deprecated; use hashlib instead import md5
Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/Sipie/sipie.py", line 22, in <module> Sipie.cliPlayer()
File "/usr/bin/Sipie/Sipie/cliPlayer.py", line 74, in cliPlayer completer = Completer(sipie.getStreams())
File "/usr/bin/Sipie/Sipie/Factory.py", line 374, in getStreams streams = self.tryGetStreams()
File "/usr/bin/Sipie/Sipie/Factory.py", line 298, in tryGetStreams soup = BeautifulSoup(data)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/BeautifulSoup-3.1.0.1-py2.6.egg/BeautifulSoup.py", line 1499, in __init__ BeautifulStoneSoup.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/BeautifulSoup-3.1.0.1-py2.6.egg/BeautifulSoup.py", line 1230, in __init__ self._feed(isHTML=isHTML)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/BeautifulSoup-3.1.0.1-py2.6.egg/BeautifulSoup.py", line 1263, in _feed self.builder.feed(markup)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/HTMLParser.py", line 108, in feed self.goahead(0)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/HTMLParser.py", line 148, in goahead k = self.parse_starttag(i)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/HTMLParser.py", line 226, in parse_starttag endpos = self.check_for_whole_start_tag(i)
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/HTMLParser.py", line 301, in check_for_whole_start_tag self.error("malformed start tag")
File "/usr/lib/python2.6/HTMLParser.py", line 115, in error raise HTMLParseError(message, self.getpos())
HTMLParser.HTMLParseError: malformed start tag, at line 100, column 3

I looked through these files and the line numbers, but since I am unfamiliar with Python, it doesn't make much sense. Any advice on what to do next?

Answer 1

Look at column 3 of line 100 in the "data" that is mentioned in File "/usr/bin/Sipie/Sipie/Factory.py", line 298

Answer 2

Newer versions of BeautifulSoup uses HTMLParser rather than SGMLParser (due to SGMLParser being removed from the Python 3.0 standard library). As a result, BeautifulSoup can no longer process many malformed HTML documents correctly, which is what I believe you are encountering here.

A solution to your problem is likely to be to uninstall BeautifulSoup, and install an older version (which will still work with Python 2.6 on Ubuntu 10.04LTS):

sudo apt-get remove python-beautifulsoup
sudo easy_install -U "BeautifulSoup==3.0.7a"

Just be aware that this temporary solution will no longer work with Python 3.0 (which may become the default in future versions of Ubuntu).