`pip search pam` returns `xmlrpc.client.Fault:`

Environment

• pip version: 10.0.1
• Python version: 2.7.15, 3.6.5rc1
• OS: Debian Testing

Description

> $ pip search pam                                                                                                            
Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/pip/_internal/basecommand.py", line 228, in main
    status = self.run(options, args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/pip/_internal/commands/search.py", line 48, in run
    pypi_hits = self.search(query, options)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/pip/_internal/commands/search.py", line 65, in search
    hits = pypi.search({'name': query, 'summary': query}, 'or')
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/xmlrpc/client.py", line 1112, in __call__
    return self.__send(self.__name, args)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/xmlrpc/client.py", line 1452, in __request
    verbose=self.__verbose
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/pip/_internal/download.py", line 792, in request
    return self.parse_response(response.raw)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/xmlrpc/client.py", line 1342, in parse_response
    return u.close()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/xmlrpc/client.py", line 656, in close
    raise Fault(**self._stack[0])
xmlrpc.client.Fault: <Fault -32500: 'application error'>

> $ pip search abc                                                                                                            
micropython-abc (0.0.1)  - Dummy abc module for MicroPython
ABC (0.0.0)              - UNKNOWN
recursive-abc (0.1.0)    - A package to simplify the creation and manipulation of recursive data structures.
django-abc (1.0.0)       - extension to django inheritance for automatically casting base to appropriate subclass
ycytest (1.3.0)          - abc
cosmoabc (1.0.9)         - Python ABC sampler
pabc (0.1.1)             - Massively parallel ABC for Python
payce (0.1.1)            - Massively parallel ABC for Python
draco (0.1.1)            - Massively parallel ABC for Python
dramatic (0.1.1)         - Massively parallel ABC for Python
dirac (0.1.1)            - Massively parallel ABC for Python
elfi (0.7.1)             - Modular ABC inference framework for python
pyabc (0.8.19)           - Distributed, likelihood-free ABC-SMC inference
visage (0.3.0)           - Loosely coupled, ABC based, Python Interface Registry
abcplus (0.1.0)          - An amplified version of abc for Abstract Base Classes plus more
astroabc (1.4.2)         - A Python implementation of an Approximate Bayesian Computation Sequential Monte Carlo (ABC SMC)
                           sampler for parameter estimation.
abcpy (0.5.0)            - A framework for approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) that speeds up inference by parallelizing
                           computation on single computers or whole clusters.

Same behaviour can be observed with pip3

Expected behavior

To get a list of packages containing pam in their name or description. Similar to the PyPi search

How to Reproduce

1. Get package from the OS or the get-pip.py script
2. Then run 'pip search pam`
3. An error occurs.

Output

Paste the output of the steps above, including the commands themselves and
pip's output/traceback etc.

[pradyunsg]

Thanks for looking into this @jhermann! I’ve filed pypa/warehouse#4074 for this.

I’ll close this issue. 😃

[jhermann]

The pam package has an empty (null) summary (cf. http --pretty all --follow -v GET https://pypi.org/pypi/pam/json | less -R), which is uncommon and might cause this. And it is definitely server-side, the Fault response is in answer to the XMLRPC request.

In the PyPI server logs, there’ll be a line with xml-rpc exception "…", showing the real (internal) exception causing the fault response (the “application” in the error is referring to the XMLRPC server implementation).