Good Morning, 

I am trying to use Biomart to annotate genes but I always have this error message that appears : 

The query to the BioMart webservice returned an invalid result: biomaRt expected a character string of length 1. Please report this to the mailing list.

I find a subject on bioconductor about this issue : The query to the BioMart webservice returned an invalid result: the number of columns in the result table does not equal the number of attributes in the query

But the error remains when I try to install a patched version via GitHub:

BiocInstaller::biocLite('grimbough/biomaRt')

 And the code doesn't  work when I try an archive version :

human = useMart("ensembl", dataset = "hsapiens_gene_ensembl", "http://Aug2017.archive.ensembl.org")

Error in listMarts(host = host, path = path, port = port, includeHosts = TRUE,  : 
  Unexpected format to the list of available marts.
Please check the following URL manually, and try ?listMarts for advice.
http://Aug2017.archive.ensembl.org:80/biomart/martservice?type=registry&requestid=biomaRt

here is the code I use :

require(biomaRt)
listMarts()
ensMart<-useMart("ensembl")
View(listDatasets(ensMart))
ensembl_hs_mart <- useMart(biomart="ensembl", dataset="mmusculus_gene_ensembl")
View(listAttributes(ensembl_hs_mart))

infos_genes = getBM(attributes=c("entrezgene"),mart = ensembl_hs_mart)
View(infos_genes)

infos_genes = getBM(attributes=c("entrezgene","percentage_gene_gc_content","gene_biotype","chromosome_name"),
                    filter="entrezgene",
                    values=rownames(countsTable),
                    mart = mart)
View(infos_genes)

session info :

Show in New WindowClear OutputExpand/Collapse Output
         used (Mb) gc trigger (Mb) max used (Mb)
Ncells 449007 24.0     750400 40.1   592000 31.7
Vcells 804975  6.2    1650153 12.6   949924  7.3
               _                           
platform       x86_64-w64-mingw32          
arch           x86_64                      
os             mingw32                     
system         x86_64, mingw32             
status                                     
major          3                           
minor          4.3                         
year           2017                        
month          11                          
day            30                          
svn rev        73796                       
language       R                           
version.string R version 3.4.3 (2017-11-30)
nickname       Kite-Eating Tree            
Memory set to  7839  Mb. 

Show in New WindowClear OutputExpand/Collapse Output
R version 3.4.3 (2017-11-30)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 7 x64 (build 7601) Service Pack 1

Matrix products: default

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=French_France.1252  LC_CTYPE=French_France.1252    LC_MONETARY=French_France.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C                   LC_TIME=French_France.1252    

attached base packages:
 [1] stats4    splines   parallel  stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] biomaRt_2.34.2                           EDASeq_2.12.0                           
 [3] ShortRead_1.36.0                         GenomicAlignments_1.14.1                
 [5] SummarizedExperiment_1.8.1               DelayedArray_0.4.1                      
 [7] matrixStats_0.53.0                       Rsamtools_1.30.0                        
 [9] Biostrings_2.46.0                        XVector_0.18.0                          
[11] BiocParallel_1.12.0                      edgeR_3.20.7                            
[13] limma_3.34.6                             Mus.musculus_1.3.1                      
[15] TxDb.Mmusculus.UCSC.mm10.knownGene_3.4.0 org.Mm.eg.db_3.5.0                      
[17] GO.db_3.5.0                              OrganismDbi_1.20.0                      
[19] GenomicFeatures_1.30.3                   GenomicRanges_1.30.0                    
[21] GenomeInfoDb_1.14.0                      AnnotationDbi_1.40.0                    
[23] IRanges_2.12.0                           S4Vectors_0.16.0                        
[25] NOISeq_2.22.0                            Matrix_1.2-12                           
[27] Biobase_2.38.0                           BiocGenerics_0.24.0                     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] Rcpp_0.12.15           locfit_1.5-9.1         lattice_0.20-35        prettyunits_1.0.2     
 [5] assertthat_0.2.0       digest_0.6.15          R6_2.2.2               aroma.light_3.8.0     
 [9] DESeq_1.30.0           RSQLite_2.0            httr_1.3.1             BiocInstaller_1.28.0  
[13] pillar_1.2.1           zlibbioc_1.24.0        rlang_0.2.0            progress_1.1.2        
[17] annotate_1.56.1        blob_1.1.0             R.utils_2.6.0          R.oo_1.21.0           
[21] RMySQL_0.10.14         geneplotter_1.56.0     stringr_1.3.0          RCurl_1.95-4.10       
[25] bit_1.1-12             compiler_3.4.3         rtracklayer_1.38.3     pkgconfig_2.0.1       
[29] tibble_1.4.2           GenomeInfoDbData_1.0.0 XML_3.98-1.10          bitops_1.0-6          
[33] R.methodsS3_1.7.1      grid_3.4.3             RBGL_1.54.0            xtable_1.8-2          
[37] DBI_0.8                magrittr_1.5           graph_1.56.0           stringi_1.1.6         
[41] genefilter_1.60.0      hwriter_1.3.2          latticeExtra_0.6-28    RColorBrewer_1.1-2    
[45] tools_3.4.3            bit64_0.9-7            survival_2.41-3        yaml_2.1.17           
[49] memoise_1.1.0          knitr_1.20            

Thanks a lot,

Have a good day

ty for answer ,

I see this if I go to http://Aug2017.archive.ensembl.org:80/biomart/martservice?type=registry&requestid=biomaRt :

<MartRegistry>
  <MartURLLocation database="ensembl_mart_90" default="1" displayName="Ensembl Genes 90" host="aug2017.archive.ensembl.org" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_ENSEMBL" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="1" />
  <MartURLLocation database="mouse_mart_90" default="" displayName="Mouse strains 90" host="aug2017.archive.ensembl.org" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_MOUSE" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="1" />
  <MartURLLocation database="sequence_mart_90" default="" displayName="Sequence" host="aug2017.archive.ensembl.org" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_SEQUENCE" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="" />
  <MartURLLocation database="ontology_mart_90" default="" displayName="Ontology" host="aug2017.archive.ensembl.org" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_ONTOLOGY" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="" />
  <MartURLLocation database="genomic_features_mart_90" default="" displayName="Genomic features 90" host="aug2017.archive.ensembl.org" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_GENOMIC" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="" />
  <MartURLLocation database="snp_mart_90" default="" displayName="Ensembl Variation 90" host="aug2017.archive.ensembl.org" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_SNP" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="1" />
  <MartURLLocation database="regulation_mart_90" default="" displayName="Ensembl Regulation 90" host="aug2017.archive.ensembl.org" includeDatasets="" martUser="" name="ENSEMBL_MART_FUNCGEN" path="/biomart/martservice" port="80" serverVirtualSchema="default" visible="1" />
</MartRegistry>

So it seems ok,

I work in a company which uses a very secured proxy so because it has something to do with it even if I used 

Sys.setenv(https_proxy="")  to prevent this problem.

Ty a lot,

have a good day