font install fails silently

[ivo welch]

basic ubuntu 12.10 install.

I downloaded the free inconsolata font in .otf format. http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html.

then I double-click on it. the font display opens up nicely. clicking install however tells me "Install Failed". no further information. is it because a directory is protected? or does not exist? or ... there should be some sort of log that allows me to look up what happened.

I then tried the same process with su privileges. now I get a message on the console

** (gnome-font-viewer:3504): WARNING **: Install failed: can't find any configured user font directory.

wouldn't it be nice if it told me where it looks up the configured user font directory? are we looking now at /root/.font , or ...

regards,

/iaw

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Thorben Dahl (thorbendahl)]

I'm also experiencing this bug, although I tried to install a .tff font.

Workaround: I managed to install the needed fonts by following the "Manually Install Multiple Fonts"-instructions in this article: http://www.wikihow.com/Install-TrueType-Fonts-on-Ubuntu

[Zulker Nayeen Nahiyan (nahiyan02)]

I'm affected by this bug too, running gnome-font-viewer (as root or not) from the CLI gives the same error message but with ":3660".

Also, the article listed in #2 basically tells us to do this:
1: Copy fonts to /usr/share/fonts (or ~/.fonts for user-only availability, no need for root privilages.)
2: Change ownership of the fonts to root (:root, group should be changed too, wasn't); or if you copied to ~/.fonts, you should probably change permissions to allow reads from anyone. (chmod -R a+r ~/.fonts)
3: Run fc-cache. By my understanding, this updates the cached list of fonts available.

Guess that's manual alright..

[Jose Gómez (adler-dreamcoder)]

Today I had this same problem with a font with extension .TTF (uppercase). There was an error during install of the font (the same error message).

Renaming the font to .ttf solved the issue. I was then able to install the font properly. Might the solution be something else, and it was just a coincidence? Not sure. Can anyone else with the issue try this workaround?

[Thomas Meyer (shokah)]

Hi,

you can see debug messages from gnome-font-viewer by running it in the shell with:

$ G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all gnome-font-viewer AmaticSC-Regular.ttf
(gnome-font-viewer:20743): Gtk-DEBUG: Connecting to session manager
** (gnome-font-viewer:20743): DEBUG: Install failed: Error opening file '/home/thomas/.local/share/fonts/AmaticSC-Regular.ttf': File exists

so the font directory seems to be now under ~/.local/share/fonts/ on a recent gnome system.

I post this here for reference.