Decode() argument 'encoding' must be str, not None

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1

**Problem: I created a custom deb repository within an ubuntu container on my foreman server. I did the dpkg-scanpacakges, created InRelease. But when trying to sync the repository I keep getting the error:
**
decode() argument ‘encoding’ must be str, not None

Expected outcome:

I can sync my custom create d repository

Foreman and Proxy versions: 3.15

Foreman and Proxy plugin versions:

Distribution and version:

Other relevant data:

The baseOS is rhel9. I already spammed copilot and first I had it as an upstream with file then exposed it with a nginx container but always the same result. Tried to iconv the Release files, tried with changing my locale but nothing seems to work.
Tried UTF-8 BOM with sed but then he complains no architecture is in my release file

Tried gunzip -k of my Packages.gz

Ensured headers of nginx are UTF-8

Nothing seems to resolve my issue.

2

Can you add more details about the error like stacktrace from the task during sync and if you see only Katello::Pulp3::Error message then possibly the relevant pulp log from /var/log/messages.

3

The issue seems to be created by the way I made my Release file. I created it with an apt-ftparchive-repository.conf file and the apt-ftparchive -c apt-ftparchive-repository.conf release dists/jammy > dists/jammy/Release command.

I found another website where they created the custom repository differently then what I found before. So I changed multiple parts of my procedure and now the sync in my foreman works. I can’t really pinpoint which of the changes solved my issue. But for those who encounter them this is what I did:

  • The packages were moved from the dists/jammy/binary-amd64/ subfolder to a pool/main subfolder in my repository structure.
  • dpkg-scan packages was done to a Packages file and zippend afterward and not in a oneliner as I did before (old command: dpkg-scanpackages --multiversion . /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz) + gzip was with -9 instead of -9c
    • dpkg-scanpackages --multiversion --arch amd64 pool/ > dists/jammy/main/binary-amd64/Packages
    • cat dists/jammy/main/binary-amd64/Packages | gzip -9 > dists/jammy/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
    • The Release file was created with a script instead of the apt-ftparchive command.

I trigger the below script when located in my dists/jammy folder with argumest <repository_name> <os_release> and send the output to Release. Afterward I sign the InRelease and Release.gpg keys and now the sync works like a charm.

#!/bin/sh
set -e

do_hash() {
    HASH_NAME=$1
    HASH_CMD=$2
    echo "${HASH_NAME}:"
    for f in $(find -type f); do
        f=$(echo $f | cut -c3-) # remove ./ prefix
        if [ "$f" = "Release" ]; then
            continue
        fi
        echo " $(${HASH_CMD} ${f}  | cut -d" " -f1) $(wc -c $f)"
    done
}

cat << EOF
Origin: $1
Label: $1
Suite: $2
Codename: $2
Version: 1.0
Architectures: amd64 arm64 arm7
Components: main
Description: Custom created $1 repository
Date: $(date -Ru)
EOF
do_hash "MD5Sum" "md5sum"
do_hash "SHA1" "sha1sum"
do_hash "SHA256" "sha256sum"