If fonts-ubuntu isn't installed, the initramfs plymouth hook fails at fc-cache

[feren]

If you remove fonts-ubuntu from your system, or never have said package installed in the first place, and have plymouth installed, and try to update-initramfs, the hook at /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth will abort, causing the update-initramfs command to fail.
While semi-unrelated, in the case of an APT operation triggering initramfs-tools, this would also lead to package management failure (which can cause an endless loop of package management failure as APT may attempt, and fail, to run update-initramfs before it ever tries to install other packages such as fonts-ubuntu).

The script fails at line 147 (fc-cache) and removing the output disabling contents at the end of the command reveals that it fails to read /usr/share/fonts - upon further inspection /usr/share/fonts indeed never exists, with these conditions in effect, inside the initramfs being created.

It appears that having fonts-ubuntu installed leads to a mkdir command right before that command, which only runs if the Ubuntu fonts exist, creating /usr/share/fonts while it's in the process of creating a directory to copy those fonts to.

This can be fixed by adding this command underneath 'mkdir -p "${DESTDIR}/usr/local/share/fonts"':
mkdir -p "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/fonts"

Ubuntu version: 22.04.2
plymouth version: 0.9.5+git20211018-1ubuntu3

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Out of interest, what plymouth theme do you have configured? Because if you have ubuntu-text or text configured, this code does not execute; and if you have one of the other Ubuntu-provided themes installed, you have plymouth-label, which depends on fonts-ubuntu.

So this is a bug, but looks to be low-priority.

[feren (ferenos)]

A custom Plymouth theme that is not any of the default themes.