Urllib2, problems with a webserver

[Erling Ringen Elvsrud]

Hello, 


My aim is to write a small application to use free sms-sending services
in a more convenient way than with a web-browser. I found: 
http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/mechanize/ (which resemples the perl
variant). With mechanize I should manage to interact with the website
through python, like supplying usernames, filling the message form, etc. 
All well so far, I have installed it and tested it locally, 
seems to work well. 
But this piece of code: 
-------------------------------------
from mechanize import Browser

b = Browser()
b.open("http://freesms.no:88/")
assert b.viewing_html()

print b.geturl()
print b.title()
-------------------------------------

Give me this error: 

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./sms_sender.py", line 11, in ?
    b.open("http://freesms.no:88/")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/mechanize/_mechanize.py", 
   line 106, in open
    def open(self, url, data=None): return self._open(url, data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/mechanize/_mechanize.py", 
   line 133, in _open
    self._parse_html(self.response)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/mechanize/_mechanize.py", 
  line 464, in _parse_html
    for token in p.tags(*(self.urltags.keys()+["base"])):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/pullparser.py", line 90, in 
   iter_until_exception
    yield fn(*args, **kwds)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/pullparser.py", line 194, 
   in get_tag
    tok = self.get_token()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/pullparser.py", line 177, 
   in get_token
    self.feed(data)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/HTMLParser.py", line 108, in feed
    self.goahead(0)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/HTMLParser.py", line 148, in goahead
    k = self.parse_starttag(i)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/HTMLParser.py", line 239, in parse_starttag
    endpos = self.check_for_whole_start_tag(i)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/HTMLParser.py", line 314, 
  in check_for_whole_start_tag
    self.error("malformed start tag")
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/HTMLParser.py", line 115, in error
    raise HTMLParseError(message, self.getpos())
HTMLParser.HTMLParseError: malformed start tag, at line 2, column 1365
--------------------------------------

By commenting out line 314 of HTMLParser.py and adding "return" 
I manage to continue. And everything seems to work (albeit not tested
much). This is ofcourse not an acceptable solution... 

How come I get this error? 

Can the server software be a issue?
According to netcraft the server runs Microsoft-IIS/5.0


Thanks, 

   Erling