"Error in updating source" and "Problem getting file" errors

In the latest version I get a bunch of these errors while running either the updateHostsFile.py script (the first one I tried) or makeHosts.py (which I tried later to see if it would fix the errors):

Updating source extensions/fakenews from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marktron/fakenews/master/fakenews Problem getting file: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marktron/fakenews/master/fakenews Error in updating source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marktron/fakenews/master/fakenews

[dksaunders]

This was an issue for me just now on macOS. I added code in the get_file_by_url() method to show the full exception, which was

<urlopen error [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: unable to get local issuer certificate (_ssl.c:1056)>

This was caused by Python not using the OpenSSL certificates from macOS. I ended up

1. Installing Python from python.org, instead of using the version that came installed on the Mac. If you’re already using an installed (non-default) Python, skip this.
2. At the end of the install, it should prompt to run the /Applications/Python 3.8/Install Certificates.command. Do that.

Hopefully that solves the issue for you.

[valentin-krasontovitsch]

I’m getting this message as well, trying to figure out what’s going on - I added some debugging output, and looking at the (type of the) exception that’s thrown in get_file_by_url, I’m seeing

<class 'bs4.FeatureNotFound'>
Couldn't find a tree builder with the features you requested: lxml. Do you need to install a parser library?

So the call to urlopen returns with a status of 200, but the subsequent call to BeautifulSoup must be failing.

Running on a raspberry pi, with raspbian stretch, python 3.5.3, and having just pulled and installed the requirements with pip 18.0.

Apparently some requirement or library is missing? Gonna try to investigate further…

And I found a viable solution (for my problem) in this issue on another repo - there it suggests to install some apt packages, as such:

apt-get install libxslt1-dev libxml2 python-dev

for me it was the first one which had apparently been missing, and it fixed the problem!

I don’t know if that was the OP’s problem as well, but in any case I would suggest adding these requirements (which seem to be hard requirements at least on raspbian-stretch) somewhere in the docs - unless you think that’s too obscure, and this comment might serve as enough documentation ; )