PUBLISHING TO URL...
http://sprunge.us/MhbXUt

1. I just logged into @nzola's machine and this worked to add the missing cest-pas-sorcier_fr_top to his IIAB home page:

   root@lokole1:/library/www/html/home# iiab-update-menus
   Updating Home Page Menu
   Updating kiwix menu items
   Adding fr-cest-pas-sorcier_fr_top to Menu
   Updating iiab installed services' menu items
   Updating installed OER2Go menu items
   
   root@lokole1:/library/www/html/home# diff menu.json.sorcier-missing menu.json
   61a62
   >     "fr-cest-pas-sorcier_fr_top",
   
   ...
   
   root@lokole1:/library/zims/content# ls -l cest-pas-sorcier_fr_top_2021-01.zim
   -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9877741846 Apr 20  2021 cest-pas-sorcier_fr_top_2021-01.zim
   

2. @tim-moody do you want to log in, to try to better understand the original Python JSONDecodeError issue?

This appears to be another case of #3487.

• The point of failure was line 1004 in adm_lib.py.
• But it is almost impossible to reconstruct what events led to this.
• The log shows that this error happened in the second step of the download of the cest_sorcier top zim, but it need not be due to that zim or its menu def. It simply failed to read the menu.json file prior to adding that zim to the menu.
• The menu.json file purported to have failed has been preserved by renaming, but adm_lib reads it with no error.
• None of the corruptions in other instances of this problem are found in this file.
• I downloaded that zim through the Admin Console on my VM, and it was added to the home page with no problem.

The only unexpected results are

• No error messages were issued implying that verbose=False
• Seems that no attempt was made to fix the file implying that fix_json=False (it's hard to be sure since there are no messages)

This appears to be another case of #3487.

Great that diagnostic leads are documented (in case this happens again).

Thanks @nzola and @tim-moody for having spent the time to dig into this 🕵️