OverflowError, "long int exceeds XML-RPC limits"

FWIW, upstream version of denyhosts has been at 2.7 since November 2008. Perhaps a package update is in order?

The denyhosts author (thanks Phil!) and another person seem to have solved this issue. See http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2898723&group_id=131204&atid=720419 for the details.

I am running Ubuntu 10.04. The following fix from sourceforge blog got it working for me:

1) Edit /var/lib/denyhosts/sync-timestamp, and replace the timestamp with a valid unix timestamp. (I used 1276467300 )

2) At line 55 in /usr/share/denyhosts/DenyHosts/sync.py, I made the following change

from
fp = open(os.path.join(self.__work_dir,
SYNC_TIMESTAMP), "a")

to
fp = open(os.path.join(self.__work_dir,
SYNC_TIMESTAMP), "w")

I take *NO* credit for the fix, but am posting to give something back to the community & hopefully save the next chap some research time fixing this issue.

Thanks Ted, will try your tweaks

Nice , i've received 50 new hosts since #3 changes

i confirm that with #3 change proposed, now denyhosts is working fine, but it'll be nice to use the latest stable package available instead of this oldish into ubuntu repo: please devs upgrade it

Glad it worked for you!

worked for me too! thanks!

is this likely to be changed in a package update?

I just tried this fix, but it didn't help much. I somehow doubt this 'fix' will do much, since the error one should have gotten if there was a problem with opening in append mode would be something completely different than an XML-RPC error.

I've tried tracing the problem, but after some work, I noticed that even though we're getting these error messages, the server does indeed receive updates. It might be a problem where denyhosts are _not_ receiving updates, and probably related to SYNC_DOWNLOAD_RESILIENCY, and then panicing slightly before going on.

I suggest doing a won'tfix on this one, since it's clearly not a critical bug, although it may be good to document it somewhere

roy

> I somehow doubt this 'fix' will do much, since the
> error one should have gotten if there was a problem
> with opening in append mode would be something
> completely different than an XML-RPC error.

No -- the error makes sense actually. What happens is something like this:
 - the timestamp file starts out as a valid timestamp (e.g. "1285710078")
 - denyhosts updates it, **appending** to it, yielding a timestamp with twice the normal amount of digits.
   (e.g. "12857100781285710679" in my case)
 - The next time denyhosts sends a request to the server, it asks for all the changes since this gigantic timestamp, and that causes the long int OverflowError described in the initial comment here.

So I think everything makes sense here. I've just applied the suggested workaround to one of my own servers, but I haven't verified whether it's worked yet.

(Just to follow up on comment #11 -- the workaround did indeed work for me.)

Thanks Ted, your feedback helped me alot to pinpoint this isses fast. Expierienced also under Debian squeeze.

The change suggested by comment #3 resolves this issue. This is still an existing problem today on an up-to-date system running Maverick, so I generated the attached patch hoping that it will be incorporated soon into an update.

This problem also exists in Natty. I just installed a new server with Natty, and it has this problem.

I still have this problem in oneiric ..

denyhosts --sync
long int exceeds XML-RPC limits
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/denyhosts/DenyHosts/sync.py", line 117, in receive_new_hosts
    self.__prefs.get("SYNC_DOWNLOAD_RESILIENCY"))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1224, in __call__
    return self.__send(self.__name, args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1569, in __request
    allow_none=self.__allow_none)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 1085, in dumps
    data = m.dumps(params)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 632, in dumps
    dump(v, write)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 654, in __dump
    f(self, value, write)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xmlrpclib.py", line 680, in dump_long
    raise OverflowError, "long int exceeds XML-RPC limits"
OverflowError: long int exceeds XML-RPC limits

OI confirm, this error occurs in oneiric, 11.10, but the fix mentioned above works! (change from "a" to "w')

As the Debian is marked as "fixed", the ubuntu one should be synced also

This error is 2 years old. Why isn't it fixed. I think, precise pangolin should be an LTS release. I think I will install this package from the developers homepage instead of installing it from the ubuntu repositories. :-( is there nobody, who maintains this package?

That package is quite old : latest sourceforge released is from 2008, even if some maintenance is still done

http://sourceforge.net/p/denyhosts/patches/