Downloading fonts fails: Most sf mirrors fail

[Thomas Mayer]

Downloading andale32.exe returns http status 404 (not found):

ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing...
ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
Fehl:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
  404 Not Found
W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/andale32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Keine Berechtigung)
E: Fehlschlag beim Holen von https://vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe 404 Not Found

E: Herunterladen fehlgeschlagen

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: ttf-mscorefonts-installer 3.4+nmu1ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-57.78-generic 4.4.35
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-57-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Jan 7 03:46:44 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-11-29 (769 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de_DE
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: msttcorefonts
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-06-15 (205 days ago)

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

Downloading the file directly works perfectly fine:

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
--2017-01-07 04:12:37-- http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
Auflösen des Hostnamen »downloads.sourceforge.net (downloads.sourceforge.net)«... 216.34.181.59
Verbindungsaufbau zu downloads.sourceforge.net (downloads.sourceforge.net)|216.34.181.59|:80... verbunden.
HTTP-Anforderung gesendet, warte auf Antwort... 301 Moved Permanently
Platz: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe [folge]
--2017-01-07 04:12:37-- http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe
Verbindungsaufbau zu downloads.sourceforge.net (downloads.sourceforge.net)|216.34.181.59|:80... verbunden.
HTTP-Anforderung gesendet, warte auf Antwort... 302 Found
Platz: https://netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe [folge]
--2017-01-07 04:12:37-- https://netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe
Auflösen des Hostnamen »netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net (netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net)«... 78.35.24.46, 2001:4dd0:1234:6::5f
Verbindungsaufbau zu netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net (netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net)|78.35.24.46|:443... verbunden.
HTTP-Anforderung gesendet, warte auf Antwort... 200 OK
Länge: 198384 (194K) [application/octet-stream]
In »»andale32.exe«« speichern.

andale32.exe 100%[===================>] 193,73K --.-KB/s in 0,1s

2017-01-07 04:12:38 (1,33 MB/s) - »andale32.exe« gespeichert [198384/198384]

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

Same for the other http resource: Direct download works:

wget "https://vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe"
--2017-01-07 04:15:18-- https://vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe
Auflösen des Hostnamen »vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net (vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net)«... 5.10.152.194
Verbindungsaufbau zu vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net (vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net)|5.10.152.194|:443... verbunden.
HTTP-Anforderung gesendet, warte auf Antwort... 200 OK
Länge: 198384 (194K) [application/octet-stream]
In »»andale32.exe.1«« speichern.

andale32.exe.1 100%[===================>] 193,73K 526KB/s in 0,4s

2017-01-07 04:15:18 (526 KB/s) - »andale32.exe.1« gespeichert [198384/198384]

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

There's a bug.

andale32.exe already was downloaded in the target directory:

/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial$ ls -lh
insgesamt 196K
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 194K Aug 15 2002 andale32.exe

I deleted the file and tried again:

ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing...
ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
Fehl:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
  Protocol "http" not supported or disabled in libcurl
W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/andale32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Keine Berechtigung)
E: Fehlschlag beim Holen von https://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe Protocol "http" not supported or disabled in libcurl

E: Herunterladen fehlgeschlagen
ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) wird eingerichtet ...

This time, the directory remained empty:

/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial$ ls -lh
insgesamt 0

It seems as if the whole issue has to do with permissions instead of invalid URLs.

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

Permissions are:

 ls -lh /var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Jan 7 04:21 partial
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jan 7 04:21 ttf-mscorefonts-installer.failed

Indeed, a user with name "_apt" can't write to directory "partial".

Permissions need to be changed here. Or privileges should not be dropped (the latter might be insecure).

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

I filed a separate issue 1654702 for the permissions problem.

However, after temporarily fixing permissions of that directory, I still struggle to download the files automatically:

Sourceforge seems to set a mirror per files. Rarely one of the mirrors is hosting the file.

Now that msttfcorefonts-installer tries to download many files, sourceforge sets a separate mirror for each file.

Chances are high that one of the mirrors fails.

If one of the mirror fails msttfcorefonts-installer fails.

I tried about 20 times now and msttfcorefonts-installer never succeeded to download the files.

Suggested fix:
- Use one fixed mirror to download all the files
- And/or: Try multiple times
- And/or: Use reliable hosting

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

Eventually, ask Microsoft if they could host their files somewhere. This is not a joke.

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

"somewhere" could be the github department of MS.

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

The funny thing is that when I download a file with wget, it always works.

That said, I think this issue somehow needs to be fixed in msttcorefonts-installer.

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

This seems to be a duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/msttcorefonts/+bug/1371783 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/msttcorefonts/+bug/1607535

[Thomas Mayer (thomas303)]

Worked around it by upgrading to debian's 3.6 version:

Upgrading to debian's 3.6 package worked for me for ubuntu 16.04:

wget "http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/m/msttcorefonts/ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb"
sudo apt-get remove --purge ttf-mscorefonts-installer
sudo dpkg -i ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb