[Bug 1655431] Re: apt-helper / update-notifier / ttf-mscorefonts-installer download failure (regression)

[Jonathan Kamens]

The bug of which this one was previously marked a duplicate (I unmarked
it) was fixed months ago, and yet I'm still getting this email from
cron.daily every single day:

>/etc/cron.daily/update-notifier-common:
>ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing...

The problem at this point seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with
spaces in URLs or anything like that. Rather, the problem is that when
the package ttf-mscorefonts-installer is installed non-interactively,
the license is not accepted, and the downloader for the package silently
fails to download any fonts if the license hasn't been accepted.

Note this stanza at the end of /usr/share/package-data-downloads/ttf-
mscorefonts-installer:

>Script: /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts
>Should-Download: msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula

On my system, msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula is false, because
the package was installed non-interactively.

The code which silently refuses to download fonts if that setting is
false is in /usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader:

>                if 'Should-Download' in para:
>                    db = debconf.DebconfCommunicator('update-notifier')
>                    try:
>                        should = db.get(para['Should-Download'])
>                        if should == "false":
>                            # Do nothing with this file.                        
>                            break
>                    except:
>                        pass
>                    finally:
>                        db.shutdown()

Furthermore, maybe I'm missing something, but I can't find any supported
way of accepting this license once the package has been installed,
because the code that prompts the user to accept the license is in
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ttf-mscorefonts-installer.preinst, and as far as I
can tell, dpkg-reconfigure doesn't rerun preinst files.

** This bug is no longer a duplicate of bug 1651923
   apt https method decodes redirect locations and sends them to the destination undecoded.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to apt in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1655431

Title:
  apt-helper / update-notifier / ttf-mscorefonts-installer download
  failure (regression)

Status in apt package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  * OS release: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
  * Package version: 3.168.3

  For the past few days (maybe even weeks for other users), update-
  notifier has been very repeatedly failing to handle the downloads for
  ttf-mscorefonts-installer. Previously it was working fine on the same
  system.

  This seems to affect a lot of desktop users, but the issue is usually
  misdiagnosed on forums because it is attributed to ttf-mscorefonts-
  installer and not to update-notifier-common.

  The issue is made particularly irritating because the update-notifier
  cron job tries and fails and notifies users daily of this failure.

  The issue can be reproduced by having ttf-mscorefonts-installer
  installed, and running:

      sudo dpkg-reconfigure update-notifier-common

  The error messages seem to be random but actually appear to be
  consistent for a given download source:

  * freefr.dl.sourceforge.net: 404  Not Found
  * kent.dl.sourceforge.net: Protocol "http" not supported or disabled in libcurl
  * netassist.dl.sourceforge.net: The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header Bad header data [IP: 62.205.134.42 80]
  * netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net: The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header
  * netix.dl.sourceforge.net: 404  Not Found
  * vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net: 404  Not Found

  In all above cases, the reported failing URL can be downloaded just
  fine using wget.

  Some other mirrors appear to work (unfortunately, mirror names are
  only printed in case of errors). However, since ttf-mscorefonts-
  installer triggers 11 downloads in a row, chances of randomly getting
  11 working mirrors are very low.

  I am tagging this as regression-update because the issue started
  happening when upgrading from 3.168.2 to 3.168.3 last Friday. It is of
  course entirely possible the root cause is in another package, but
  this would also likely be a regression-update, since I am very careful
  about system-wide changes on this machine.

  The previous update from 3.168.1 to 3.168.2 on November 4th went just
  fine. ttf-mscorefonts-installer has been installed (just fine) on
  September 26th, and not upgraded since then.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1655431/+subscriptions