Failure to download extra data files

[Brian Ealdwine]

I'm using 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pipelight/stable/ubuntu vivid main' (amd64).

After install, things work (after a minor fix to /usr/share/wine-browser-installer/test-xattr to run python2).

..except that I get random popup messages with the following text:

"""
Failure to download extra data files

The following packages requested additional data downloads after package installation, but the data could not be downloaded or could not be processed.

netflix-desktop, wine-browser-installer, wine-silverlight5.1-installer

The download will be attempted again later, or you can try the download again now. Running this command requires an active Internet connection.

<run this action now button> <close button>
"""

The 'run this action now' button seems to have no effect. The close button closes the window. The window pops up at some other point in time.

I'm not *entirely* certain whether this is netflix-desktop or the pipelight browser plugin. Should I be filing this with pipelight?

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

same problem.
it seems that installation is not needed because netflix-desktop and netflix through pipelight work any way.
the installer mentions a missing folder or location in a program that wants to use this.
the install script has missing, current folder information, and there-by fails to install.
I cannot give you the error message, since the error has to happen when I am paying attention to copy it.

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

What version of netflix-desktop are you guys using?

[Brian Ealdwine (eode)]

I'm using:
0.8.9-1~ubuntu15.04.1

[Brian Ealdwine (eode)]

I don't know how it's run exactly, or else I'd give you more detailed info. It seems to be something that is run in the background on login, though, or that is run in the background at some interval.

[Adam Colligan (adam-p)]

This has been a very longstanding problem for me. My amateur speculation has been that there is some location mismatch in how part of the installation script that deals with proprietary fonts or other code additions downloads those files versus where it looks for them once they're downloaded.

Here's what a reinstall looks like in terminal (which will then trigger the maddening "failed to download extra data files" popup. I've tried manually creating/deleting/renaming/copying folders and files in the partial downloads and cache areas, but nothing seems to resolve the problem.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall netflix-desktop
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 7,866 B of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net/pipelight/stable/ubuntu/ vivid/main netflix-desktop all 0.8.9-1~ubuntu15.04.1 [7,866 B]
Fetched 7,866 B in 0s (19.2 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 595401 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../netflix-desktop_0.8.9-1~ubuntu15.04.1_all.deb ...
Unpacking netflix-desktop (0.8.9-1~ubuntu15.04.1) over (0.8.9-1~ubuntu15.04.1) ...
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon (0.5.1+15.04.20150202-0ubuntu1) ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.10.1-0ubuntu5) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for update-notifier-common (3.160) ...
netflix-desktop: downloading http://cdn-0.nflximg.com/en_us/home/logo_v7.png
Get:1 http://cdn-0.nflximg.com/en_us/home/logo_v7.png [2,680 B]
Fetched 2,680 B in 0s (50.4 kB/s)
Everything downloaded and installed.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader", line 260, in process_download_requests
    os.remove(f)
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/logo_v7.png'
wine-browser-installer: downloading http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-22.0&os=win&lang=en-US
Get:1 http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-22.0&os=win&lang=en-US [21.8 MB]
Fetched 21.8 MB in 10s (2,159 kB/s)

Silverlight is provided by Microsoft in unmodified form only, you may not redistribute the software.

Everything downloaded and installed.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader", line 260, in process_download_requests
    os.remove(f)
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/?product=firefox-22.0&os=win&lang=en-US'
wine-silverlight5.1-installer: downloading http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/8/C/F8C0EACB-92D0-4722-9B18-965DD2A681E9/30514.00/Silverlight.exe
Get:1 http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/8/C/F8C0EACB-92D0-4722-9B18-965DD2A681E9/30514.00/Silverlight.exe [6,958 kB]
Fetched 6,958 kB in 3s (2,267 kB/s) ...

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

Ok, I'm thinking that this is a change Ubuntu has made to the package-data-downloader (I test on 12.04 and 14.04), could you please try editing the file "/usr/share/wine-browser-installer/install-files" and removing the part that says:
----
# Remove all the temporary files
for tempfile in "$@"; do
 rm $tempfile;
done
----
and then trying the download again?

[Adam Colligan (adam-p)]

Removing those lines appears to have resolved the error. Hooray!

Do you know specifically what sort of change would have caused this to happen? There might have been one or two other packages that I've seen suffering from this of late. One or two of the main #ubuntu mods were fairly strongly insistent that this couldn't possibly have anything to do with the packaging system itself and was just a matter of buggy packages, so it would be good to know if there actually is a specific issue to raise about a change that has caused otherwise-working packages to break.

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

Sorry, I've been really ill for several days. It's not the packaging system, it's the "update-notifier" that does the downloading. It appears that it used to be the package's responsibility to clean up the downloads and now it's the responsibility of the update-notifier. What they _should_ do is make it backward-compatible and say "delete this file if it exists, if it does not exist then proceed as normal".

[Six (brbsix)]

In response to Erich E. Hoover's last comment, I've looked into the issue and can confirm update-notifer is indeed responsible. I've created a one line fix in case anyone is interested. It simply ensures a path exists before deleting it.

The problematic code resides in package-data-downloader within the update-notifier-common package. You have the option of either patching the installed file or updating the package itself.

To patch the installed file, download the patch then run:
`sudo patch /usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader < ./update-notifier-common-fix.patch`

To patch the package itself, you can do so quite easily with a utility I wrote named debtool (https://github.com/brbsix/debtool). Install debtool, download the patch, then run:

```
# unpack the system's update-notifier-common package into the current directory
debtool -u update-notifier-common

# install patch
patch ./update-notifier-common_*_all/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader < ./update-notifier-common-fix.patch

# build and reinstall debian package
debtool -z ./update-notifier-common_*_all
```

[Kiall Mac Innes (kiall)]

/usr/share/wine-browser-installer/install-files - where the attempt to remove the files is, comes in from wine-browser-installer provided by the pipelight PPA.

    $ dpkg -S /usr/share/wine-browser-installer/install-files
    wine-browser-installer: /usr/share/wine-browser-installer/install-files