xml.sax._exceptions.SAXParseException: scan-2016-02-01.xml:2201:0: no element found

[micah anderson <micah () riseup net>]

Hi,

I'm running nmap (7.01-2 from debian) scans out of cron once a day and
trying to ndiff the results, but each time I'm getting the same python
traceback and error.

I'm basically doing this:

/usr/bin/nmap -v --open -sV --datadir /home/nmap/scans  $TARGETS -oA scan-$date > /dev/null

and then comparing the scans like this:

/usr/bin/ndiff scan-prev.xml scan-$date.xml > diff-$date

the error I get is this:

Segmentation fault
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/ndiff", line 85, in <module>
    sys.exit(ndiff.main())
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ndiff.py", line 1503, in main
    scan_b.load_from_file(filename_b)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ndiff.py", line 74, in load_from_file
    self.load(f)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ndiff.py", line 68, in load
    parser.parse(f)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 110, in parse
    xmlreader.IncrementalParser.parse(self, source)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/sax/xmlreader.py", line 125, in parse
    self.close()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 225, in close
    self.feed("", isFinal = 1)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/sax/expatreader.py", line 217, in feed
    self._err_handler.fatalError(exc)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/sax/handler.py", line 38, in fatalError
    raise exception
xml.sax._exceptions.SAXParseException: scan-2016-02-01.xml:2201:0: no element found

That file (scan-2016-02-01.xml) looks like normal xml, if I run an xml
validator on it, I'm told: Error: Document ends too soon  in unnamed
entity at line 2200 char 43 of file, if I go to that line in the file, I
find this:

...
<taskend task="Connect Scan" time="1454367205" extrainfo="39000 total ports"/>
<taskbegin task="Service scan" time="1454367205"/>
<taskprogress task="Service scan" time="1454367237" percent="28.40" remaining="81" etc="1454367318"/>
<taskprogress task="Service scan" time="1454367273" percent="52.67" remaining="62" etc="1454367334"/>
<taskprogress task="Service scan" time="1454367303" percent="71.60" remaining="39" etc="1454367342"/>
<taskend task="Service scan" time="1454367460" extrainfo="243 services on 39 hosts"/>
<taskbegin task="NSE" time="1454367460"/>

line 2200 is the last line above, the last character on the line ('>')
is character number 41

thanks for any suggestions or help!
micah
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