lshw hangs during artifacts collection process

[qinidema]

Detailed Description

During triage (i.e. ir_triage) process uac calls the lshw tool if it exists. As I figured out it hangs indefinitely when VMWare Workstation is installed and vmware-networks.service is started, thus preventing the triage process from completion indefinitely.

Expected Behavior

Launching uac with ir_triage profile leads to successful collection of artifacts as the triage process finishes.

Current Behavior

uac hangs indefinitely on live_response/hardware/lshw.yaml step.

Possible Solution

Ideally this should be reported upstream to lshw but as a workaround I'm proposing PR #379 (the timeout values were selected just as some sane values). I've tested it and it works as intended: with vmware-networks.service stopped it produces the proper lshw output and with the service started it produces an empty output after the specified timeout.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install VMWare Workstation;
2. Enable its virtual networks feature (VM network access) with systemctl start vmware-networks.service;
3. Launch uac -p ir_triage /tmp;
4. Watch it hang on live_response/hardware/lshw.yaml step. Definitely worth noting that launching lshw independently (not during an uac invocation) produces the same results, and lshw hangs with "Network interfaces" status prompt.

Context (Environment)

I've reproduced this on 2 my PCs with VMWare Workstation 17.6.1 + lshw B.02.20 combo and 17.6.3+B.02.20 (respectively). Both are running Arch Linux as OS.

Possible Implementation

That can be investigated deeper (i.e. strace, gdb on lshw) and reported upstream to lshw.

[tclahr]

As the timeout tool is not available on all OSs, I decided to create a shell-based version that mimics the traditional timeout command. It is available in the tools/timeout directory and will be used instead.

The code was merged into develop branch #381 . I also merged your PR into develop. Can you test and let me know if it worked? Thanks!

[qinidema]

It works properly: with vmware-networks.service stopped lshw runs properly and produces output to live_response/lshw.txt file, with vmware-networks.service started (and lshw bug active) live_response/lshw.txt is absent from output, but the triage finishes successfully with all the other modules. Tested on the same 2 PCs.
Thanks to your point about timeout not being available everywhere and for your great work on timeout.sh!
So I think the issue can be closed.