Error Encountered in pfBlockerNG

smsigroupit

Good day!

I’m encountering the following error message in pfBlockerNG. Could you please advise what might be causing this issue?

Version 25.07-RELEASE

This error repeats frequently in the logs.

Thank you for your assistance.

Aug 20 13:37:29  unbound  32722  [32722:4] error: pythonmod: python error: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xc0 in position 2: invalid start byte
The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "pfb_unbound.py", line 1404, in operate
    tld = get_tld(qstate)
  File "pfb_unbound.py", line 578, in get_tld
    if qstate and qstate.qinfo and len(qstate.qinfo.qname_list) > 1:
SystemError: <built-in function _get_qname_components> returned a result with an exception set

Gertjan

@smsigroupit said in Error Encountered in pfBlockerNG:

'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xc0 in position 2: invalid start byte

Like this one.

To understand the issue, I added the 'log_info(...) line :

I saw :

What happened is : host names must be - probably not ( !) use utf-8encoding.
Somehow, the pfSense resolver unbound was 'fed' with a host names that contains a 'utf-8' charterer, your "0xc0", and unbound use uses the pythonmod scrip /var/unbound/pfb_unbound.py - to parse (check for DNSBL) and that one can't handle utf-8 chars. It fails.

How to deal with this ?

If you know what device was asking for these 'illegal' ? ** host names, stop it doing so ?
Or, add the line as I've show above, so you know what host name is the one that fails. That could give you an indication who (what device) was asking for it.

I'm not sure if utf-8 is allowed in host names. I have the impression it actually is (not sure if this is a good thing, though ...).
pfb_unbound.py doesn't like it, that's for sure.

smsigroupit

@Gertjan

thank you!