[Rpm-metadata] createrepo problem

[Dr Andrew C Aitchison]

I'm building a yum repo based on the Scientific Linux 5.2 repo, with a few 
of my own packages added. For the last few days the command
   createrepo --checkts --database --cachedir /local/dpmms-builds/active/52/x86_64 /local/dpmms-builds/active/52/x86_64
has been failing with the following essay of error message:

(process:14721): GLib-WARNING **: GError set over the top of a previous GError or uninitialized memory.
This indicates a bug in someone's code. You must ensure an error is NULL before it's set.
The overwriting error message was: Parsing other.xml error: Entity 'lt' not defined

(process:14721): GLib-WARNING **: GError set over the top of a previous GError or uninitialized memory.
This indicates a bug in someone's code. You must ensure an error is NULL before it's set.
The overwriting error message was: Parsing other.xml error: Entity 'gt' not defined

 	... several thousand repetitions omitted	...

(process:14721): GLib-WARNING **: GError set over the top of a previous GError or uninitialized memory.
This indicates a bug in someone's code. You must ensure an error is NULL before it's set.
The overwriting error message was: Parsing other.xml error: Entity 'lt' not defined

(process:14721): GLib-WARNING **: GError set over the top of a previous GError or uninitialized memory.
This indicates a bug in someone's code. You must ensure an error is NULL before it's set.
The overwriting error message was: Parsing other.xml error: Entity 'gt' not defined

Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/usr/share/createrepo/genpkgmetadata.py", line 722, in ?
     main(sys.argv[1:])
   File "/usr/share/createrepo/genpkgmetadata.py", line 646, in main
     mdgen.doRepoMetadata()
   File "/usr/share/createrepo/genpkgmetadata.py", line 321, in doRepoMetadata
     dumpMetadata.repoXML(reporoot, self.cmds)
   File "/usr/share/createrepo/dumpMetadata.py", line 821, in repoXML
     rp.getOtherdata(complete_path, csum)
   File "/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages/sqlitecachec.py", line 57, in getOtherdata
     self.repoid))
TypeError: Parsing other.xml error: Detected an entity reference loop

----

/local/dpmms-builds/active/52/x86_64 has around 3500 rpms, so in an 
attempt to simplify it I tried building a repo wirth just the a files,
just the b files, ... but all worked.
I next tried all packages beginning with a to m, and then all
packages beginning n to z. Both built fine.
I next tried building just a files, then a+b, then adding one more
letter until I reached a-x which worked and a-y which failed.
I thus suspect that I've hit some memory or buffer limit.

What do I do next to confirm that this is a createrepo bug
rather than a bug in my packages ?

Thanks,

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison		Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
A.C.Aitchison at dpmms.cam.ac.uk	http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna