Bug ID 693964: Qkview utility may generate invalid XML in files contained in Qkview

Last Modified: Jul 12, 2023

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP All(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
14.0.0, 13.1.0.1, 13.1.0

Fixed In:
14.0.0, 13.1.0.6

Opened: Nov 10, 2017

Severity: 3-Major

Symptoms

When Qkview runs, it may gather XML files that are not well-formed, and contain ASCII control characters. This is most commonly seen with mcp_module.xml. An XML validator may report an error such as: mcp_module.xml:536081: parser error : PCDATA invalid Char value 29 <msgs></msgs> ^

Impact

The control character will be written verbatim into XML without encoding. Automated tools (e.g., iHealth) that attempt to process these files may fail.

Conditions

-- Running Qkview. -- An ASCII control character exists within a certain string field.

Workaround

iHealth automatically detects and corrects this issue in uploaded Qkviews. You can analyze the XML files with some other tool, a tar.gz, so it can be unpacked, the XML files edited to correct the formatting, and then repacked. The xmllint command-line tool (present on the BIG-IP system) can also recover valid XML by removing the invalid characters. To do so, you can run a command similar to the following: xmllint --recover mcp_module.xml --output mcp_module.xml

Fix Information

Qkview no longer writes control characters in XML text, but instead processes them as expected.

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips