diff --git a/doc/bugs/rst_plugin_traceback_with_SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher_from_pyhton_2.5.mdwn b/doc/bugs/rst_plugin_traceback_with_SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher_from_pyhton_2.5.mdwn
index 95f7b44bd..9997d383b 100644
--- a/doc/bugs/rst_plugin_traceback_with_SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher_from_pyhton_2.5.mdwn
+++ b/doc/bugs/rst_plugin_traceback_with_SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher_from_pyhton_2.5.mdwn
@@ -9,3 +9,5 @@ After adding rst to plugins, ikiwiki --setup fails:
 
 This is ikiwiki version 2.40 and
 [SimpleXMLRPCServer.py](http://svn.python.org/view/python/tags/r25/Lib/SimpleXMLRPCServer.py?rev=51918&view=markup) from python-2.5
+
+[[done]]
diff --git a/plugins/rst b/plugins/rst
index abf835e2e..1d18dd775 100755
--- a/plugins/rst
+++ b/plugins/rst
@@ -61,8 +61,12 @@ def rpc_call(cmd, **kwargs):
 
 class SimpleStdinOutXMLRPCHandler(SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher):
 
-    def __init__(self):
-        SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher.__init__(self)
+    def __init__(self, allow_none=False, encoding=None):
+        if SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher.__init__.func_code.co_argcount == 1:
+            # python2.4 and before only took one argument
+            SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher.__init__(self)
+        else:
+            SimpleXMLRPCDispatcher.__init__(self, allow_none, encoding)
 
     def process_request(self, req):
         write(self._marshaled_dispatch(req))