[Bug 1843063] Re: lshw -json output invalid in Eoan

[Andrew Cloke]

(To be explicit) note that the Server Certification tests are dependant
on the lshw json output, so this issue currently breaks the Server
Certification test suite.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1843063

Title:
  lshw -json output invalid in Eoan

Status in OEM Priority Project:
  Confirmed
Status in Provider for Plainbox - Checkbox:
  Invalid
Status in lshw package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Beginning with Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan) pre-release versions, the "lshw
  -json" output appears to be invalid, and can't be parsed with either
  Python's json library or the jq stand-alone command:

  $ sudo lshw -json | jq .
  parse error: Expected separator between values at line 25, column 8

  The Python json library reports "Expecting ',' delimiter: line 25
  column 8 (char 718)".

  The first offending snippet looks like this:

    "capabilities" : {
      "smbios-2.7" : "SMBIOS version 2.7",
      "dmi-2.7" : "DMI version 2.7",
      "smp" : "Symmetric Multi-Processing",
      "vsyscall32" : "32-bit processes"
    }    {
        "id" : "core",
        "class" : "bus",

  Note the "}    {" line. In pre-Eoan versions of Ubuntu, the equivalent
  snippet looks like this:

    "capabilities" : {
      "smbios-2.7" : "SMBIOS version 2.7",
      "dmi-2.7" : "DMI version 2.7",
      "vsyscall32" : "32-bit processes"
    },
    "children" : [
      {
        "id" : "core",
        "class" : "bus",

  It looks like the new version is dropping the ', "children" : [' part.

  On the offending system:

  $ lsb_release -rd
  Description:	Ubuntu Eoan Ermine (development branch)
  Release:	19.10

  $ apt-cache policy lshw
  lshw:
    Installed: 02.18.85-0.3
    Candidate: 02.18.85-0.3
    Version table:
   *** 02.18.85-0.3 500
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/main amd64 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

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