When the bare metal operator live boots a coreos image for inspecting the Phantom Lake card via RAM Disk. It will go into a fail loop.

The reason it goes into a fail loop is because ironic-agent gets into a JSONDecodeError from lshw.

Specifically the RAM memory portion has a `\` character in the `serial` field that is unescaped thus causing the parsing to fail.
---snip---
          "children" : [            {
              "id" : "bank:0",
              "class" : "memory",
              "claimed" : true,
              "handle" : "DMI:0015",
              "description" : "DIMM DDR4 Synchronous 3200 MHz (0.3 ns)",
              "physid" : "0",
              "serial" : "\",
              "slot" : "CPU0_DIMM_A1",
              "units" : "bytes",
              "size" : 17179869184,
              "width" : 64,
              "clock" : 3200000000
            },
---snip---

OpenShift 4.17.9    

Always

    1. Install these YAML files
---
# Documentation: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_advanced_cluster_management_for_kubernetes/2.10/html-single/clusters/index#enable-cim-create-provision
apiVersion: metal3.io/v1alpha1
kind: Provisioning
metadata:
  name: provisioning-configuration
  namespace: open-cluster-management
spec:
  provisioningMacAddresses:
    # IMPORTANT: The provisioningMacAddresses is on purpose: do not change this unless you absolutely know what you're doing (hint: read docs first)!
  - aa:aa:aa:aa:aa:aa
  provisioningNetwork: Disabled
  watchAllNamespaces: true
---
apiVersion: metal3.io/v1alpha1
kind: BareMetalHost
metadata:
  name: metal3-ptl-bmh-2
  namespace: openshift-machine-api
  annotations:
        inspect.metal3.io: disabled
spec:
  bmc:
    address:  redfish-virtualmedia://wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl-bmc.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com/redfish/v1/Systems/system
    credentialsName: metal3-ptl-credentials
    disableCertificateVerification: true
  bootMACAddress: 88:dc:97:44:ed:8c
  description: "Phantom Lake"
  online: true
  automatedCleaningMode: metadata
  image:
    url: https://file.brq.redhat.com/wizhao/RHEL-9.4.0-20240527.75-x86_64-dvd1-w-kickstart-2.iso
    format: live-iso
  rootDeviceHints:
    deviceName: "/dev/mmcblk0"
    2. When the boot ISO is run from ramdisk, inspect the ironic-python-agent pod
    3.Dec 20 20:44:08 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com ironic-agent[1978]: 2024-12-20 20:44:08.066 1 DEBUG oslo_concurrency.processutils [-] Running cmd (subprocess): lshw -quiet -json execute /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/oslo_concurrency/processutils.py:390Dec 20 20:44:08 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com podman[1952]: 2024-12-20 20:44:08.066 1 DEBUG oslo_concurrency.processutils [-] Running cmd (subprocess): lshw -quiet -json execute /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/oslo_concurrency/processutils.py:390Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com ironic-agent[1978]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.553 1 DEBUG oslo_concurrency.processutils [-] CMD "lshw -quiet -json" returned: 0 in 1.487s execute /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/oslo_concurrency/processutils.py:428Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com ironic-agent[1978]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.553 1 DEBUG ironic_lib.utils [-] Command stderr is: "" _log /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/ironic_lib/utils.py:107Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com podman[1952]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.553 1 DEBUG oslo_concurrency.processutils [-] CMD "lshw -quiet -json" returned: 0 in 1.487s execute /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/oslo_concurrency/processutils.py:428Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com podman[1952]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.553 1 DEBUG ironic_lib.utils [-] Command stderr is: "" _log /usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/ironic_lib/utils.py:107Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com ironic-agent[1978]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.554 1 ERROR root [-] Unexpected error dispatching list_network_interfaces to manager <ironic_python_agent.hardware.GenericHardwareManager object at 0x7f9b75049f70>: Invalid control character at: line 331 column 30 (char 11066): json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Invalid control character at: line 331 column 30 (char 11066)Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com ironic-agent[1978]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.554 1 ERROR root Traceback (most recent call last):Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com ironic-agent[1978]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.554 1 ERROR root   File "/usr/lib/python3.9/site-packages/ironic_python_agent/hardware.py", line 3492, in dispatch_to_managersDec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com podman[1952]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.554 1 ERROR root [-] Unexpected error dispatching list_network_interfaces to manager <ironic_python_agent.hardware.GenericHardwareManager object at 0x7f9b75049f70>: Invalid control character at: line 331 column 30 (char 11066): json.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Invalid control character at: line 331 column 30 (char 11066)Dec 20 20:44:09 wsfd-advnetlab230-intel-ptl.anl.eng.bos2.dc.redhat.com podman[1952]: 2024-12-20 20:44:09.554 1 ERROR root Traceback (most recent call last):     

Bare Metal Operator does not proceed further beyond trying to inspect the h an enters a failure loop.

Bare Metal Operator should be able to inspect the HW with lshw properly.