[Bug 2121978] [NEW] Subiquity crashes for non-ASCII network adapter names

[William Hunt]

Public bug reported:

Booting the live installer gave a UnicodeDecodeError when trying to read
my Wi-Fi card as there are some non-ASCII characters appended to its
name as it appears in Window's Disk Management (2nd image in the
uploaded PDF). The "Friendly Name" as it appears in the Windows Registry
is "MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E MT7922 (RZ616) 160MHz PCIe Adapter", and the
description is "@oem22.inf,%rz616.devicedescexc%;MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E
MT7922 (RZ616) 160MHz PCIe Adapter". Those are both similar but
different to the name that appears on the installer, but it has "USB WW
WLAN<?>R<<?><?>N/A" appended, where "<?>" are non-ASCII characters that
are unable to be displayed. This is likely a bug in the Wi-Fi adapter's
firmware or EEPROM data, but giving a fatal crash from being unable to
handle Unicode characters is a bug in Subiquity. Since Ubuntu should be
designed for general users unlike other more involved distros like Arch,
encoding issues should all be handled by Subiquity and not by the user.

The only workaround I found was to disable the adapter before the error
appeared (this had to be done in < 5 seconds), trying to disable the
adapter after the error by re-running the installer just gives the same
error, and subsequent runs of the installer result in the loading icon
just spinning forever with nothing else being shown. If the name I had
to type was longer, I probably wouldn't have been able to remove the
module before the error occurred, so this fix isn't reliable. Walking
through the installer after fixing the network adapter issue, it also
quit at random button presses the first 3 times, but eventually I was
able to install Ubuntu. I'm not sure whether this is related to removing
the module, but I'll include it in this bug report in case it is. This
issue occurred with another USB, and I was able to install Debian on my
laptop without any issues.

I assume this bug can be reproduced by any Wi-Fi network adapter with
non-ASCII characters presented. The fix for this could involve either
just using UTF-16 as the encoding to be used for the network adapter
names if that's possible to do when calling the Python libraries that
end up calling `encode_unicode_string`, or by having a catch block to
attempt to decode the adapter name using UTF-16.

** Affects: subiquity (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

** Attachment added: "PDF of images showing the traceback, network adapter with a non-ASCII name, and the workaround."
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2121978/+attachment/5905043/+files/subiquity-bug-pics.pdf

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2121978

Title:
  Subiquity crashes for non-ASCII network adapter names

Status in subiquity package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Booting the live installer gave a UnicodeDecodeError when trying to
  read my Wi-Fi card as there are some non-ASCII characters appended to
  its name as it appears in Window's Disk Management (2nd image in the
  uploaded PDF). The "Friendly Name" as it appears in the Windows
  Registry is "MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E MT7922 (RZ616) 160MHz PCIe Adapter",
  and the description is "@oem22.inf,%rz616.devicedescexc%;MediaTek Wi-
  Fi 6E MT7922 (RZ616) 160MHz PCIe Adapter". Those are both similar but
  different to the name that appears on the installer, but it has "USB
  WW WLAN<?>R<<?><?>N/A" appended, where "<?>" are non-ASCII characters
  that are unable to be displayed. This is likely a bug in the Wi-Fi
  adapter's firmware or EEPROM data, but giving a fatal crash from being
  unable to handle Unicode characters is a bug in Subiquity. Since
  Ubuntu should be designed for general users unlike other more involved
  distros like Arch, encoding issues should all be handled by Subiquity
  and not by the user.

  The only workaround I found was to disable the adapter before the
  error appeared (this had to be done in < 5 seconds), trying to disable
  the adapter after the error by re-running the installer just gives the
  same error, and subsequent runs of the installer result in the loading
  icon just spinning forever with nothing else being shown. If the name
  I had to type was longer, I probably wouldn't have been able to remove
  the module before the error occurred, so this fix isn't reliable.
  Walking through the installer after fixing the network adapter issue,
  it also quit at random button presses the first 3 times, but
  eventually I was able to install Ubuntu. I'm not sure whether this is
  related to removing the module, but I'll include it in this bug report
  in case it is. This issue occurred with another USB, and I was able to
  install Debian on my laptop without any issues.

  I assume this bug can be reproduced by any Wi-Fi network adapter with
  non-ASCII characters presented. The fix for this could involve either
  just using UTF-16 as the encoding to be used for the network adapter
  names if that's possible to do when calling the Python libraries that
  end up calling `encode_unicode_string`, or by having a catch block to
  attempt to decode the adapter name using UTF-16.

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