add-apt-repository crashed with ValueError in raw_decode(): No JSON object could be decoded

[Tom Reynolds]

As you can see in the details, I was missing the trailing 'a' in PPA here, it had been cut off during copy + paste. So the repository location was incorrect, but the application should probably not crash so hard.

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: python-software-properties 0.81.13.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-18.31-generic 3.0.26
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-18-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Apr 15 02:11:21 2012
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/add-apt-repository
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release amd64 (20101007)
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.7
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/apt-add-repository ppa:speed-dreams/pp
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
PythonArgs: ['/usr/bin/apt-add-repository', 'ppa:speed-dreams/pp']
SourcePackage: software-properties
Title: add-apt-repository crashed with ValueError in raw_decode(): No JSON object could be decoded
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-21 (179 days ago)
UserGroups:

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Moritz Naumann (mnaumann)]

I agree, I'm not sure why it got marked as security issue in the first place (I believe apport did this based on some criteria).

For what it's worth, this bug which affects oneiric does not affect precise. Precise would handle the incorrect repository location gracefully and return an error message of:

Cannot access PPA (https://launchpad.net/api/1.0/~speed-dreams/+archive/pp) to get PPA information, please check your internet connection.