Suddenly Generating Scan Reports PDF/TXT/CSV are EMPTY

Building from Source and Advanced Topics
1

PDF/TXT/CSV of CVE SCAN Reports still complete fine and are not 0 bytes.

However, recently creating PDF/TXT/CSV from successful Host Scan Reports produce empty documents. The in GUI Reports show content and are valid.

Getting error:

md manage:WARNING:2026-02-07 00h16.08 UTC:707696: run_report_format_script: system failed with ret 1536, 6, /var/lib/gvm/gvmd/report_formats/3a21e135-9169-416c-8331-9f326f713d0c/a3810a62-1f62-11e1-9219-406186ea4fc5/generate /tmp/gvmd_3WIvuW/report.xml ‘/tmp/gvmd_3WIvuW’ > /tmp/gvmd_3WIvuW/a3810a62-1f62-11e1-9219-406186ea4fc5-rMRoDx.txt 2> /dev/null
md manage:WARNING:2026-02-07 00h19.09 UTC:807228: run_report_format_script: system failed with ret 256, 1, /var/lib/gvm/gvmd/report_formats/3a21e135-9169-416c-8331-9f326f713d0c/c402cc3e-b531-11e1-9163-406186ea4fc5/generate /tmp/gvmd_IIFUrc/report.xml ‘/tmp/gvmd_IIFUrc’ > /tmp/gvmd_IIFUrc/c402cc3e-b531-11e1-9163-406186ea4fc5-OjGuEJ.pdf 2> /dev/null

Then performed:

rm -rf /var/lib/gvm/gvmd/report_formats/3a21e135-9169-416c-8331-9f326f713d0c

gvmd --rebuild

Now am getting:

md manage:WARNING:2026-02-07 00h31.43 utc:814328: sql_open: PQconnectPoll failed
md manage:WARNING:2026-02-07 00h31.43 utc:814328: sql_open: PQerrorMessage (conn): connection to server on socket “/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432” failed: FATAL: role “root” does not exist
md manage:WARNING:2026-02-07 00h31.43 utc:814328: init_manage_open_db: sql_open failed
md manage:WARNING:2026-02-07 00h32.10 UTC:814614: run_report_format_script: No generate script found at /var/lib/gvm/gvmd/report_formats/3a21e135-9169-416c-8331-9f326f713d0c/c402cc3e-b531-11e1-9163-406186ea4fc5/generate

gvm-check-setup

–> It seems like your GVM-23.11.0 installation is OK.

Ideas what broke and how to correct it?

2

@mibond It appears that PostgreSQL is not running or functioning properly. The ‘generate’ files are scripts that come bundled with FeedSync. They are executable scripts. A typical issue is that one of the tools required by the script is missing.

Eero

3

@mibond I don’t understand why you did this. You deleted a system‑critical file and then ran gmvd as root, even though it should be run as the gmv user. Running FeedSync should fix it.

Eero

4

Pure panic. There were scheduled activities coming up.

Had working reports and then certain reports stopped generating properly. Feed sync was good. So tried a “purge”. It went awry.

I just flushed all the feeds. Let’s see if that corrects the original problem … maybe corrupt report for NVT scans only? CVE scan reports were fine. Even when I went back to historical NVT scans, I still could not generate a PDF, TXT, or CSV. Very odd. Maybe an interupted feed sync caused the problem? I will see in a few hours.

5

@mibond that generate script outputs the report output. there are one generate script for each report type.

Eero

6

Thanks. Of course this begs the question on the failures for the NVT scans all of a sudden …..

small, medium, large results. All the same.

7

@mibond

The investigation of the NVT issue should begin by reviewing the logs

Eero

8

logs showed nothing obvious.

However, narrowing it down. Looks like illegal character in NVT read TLS Certifcate CN. Where “&#x8” appears in CN. kills format creation. Able to create XML but need to remove character from generated XML before it is readable.

Next trick … how to purge this for every scan of this target .. rather then post-process.

9

@mibond well. modify generate file to strip it out and then chattr +i /path/to/generate file.

also create bug report!!

Eero

10

Thanks for the rec. Way ahead of you.

Once I confirm then bug report will follow.