EDR: Cannot Init EDR Server Due to invalid continuation byte Error

Products

• Carbon Black EDR (formerly Cb Response)

Issue/Introduction

• When selecting how EDR wants to manage firewall rules, the error below is encountered:

Would you like Carbon Black Enterprise Response Server to manage firewall rules? [Y/n]: n
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/cb/cbinit", line 6, in <module>
sys.exit(initcb.main(sys.argv[1:]))
File "/usr/share/cb/virtualenv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/cb/utils/cli_cmd.py", line 165, in decorator
File "/usr/share/cb/virtualenv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/cb/setup/initcb.py", line 723, in main
File "/usr/share/cb/virtualenv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/cb/setup/initcb.py", line 553, in update_etc_hosts
File "/usr/share/cb/virtualenv/lib/python3.8/site-packages/cb/setup/etc_hosts.py", line 37,
in apply_update
File "/usr/lib64/python3.8/codecs.py", line 322, in decode
(result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xd8 in position 1967: invalid continuation byte

 

Environment

• EDR: Version 7.x

Cause

• In the case above,  'Ø' or hex character 0xd8 is located in the hosts file.
   

Resolution

• Remove  'Ø' character or character's mentioned in the exception from the hosts file.