ttf-mscorefonts-installer not detected as installed on Debian

[Sam L.]

My system is Debian Wheezy amd64.

I've install both the patched version of Wine and the netflix-desktop (0.4.0) package (quantal version - running Debian Testing on my box).

On loading netflix-desktop for the first time I'm informed of the fact that not all packages required by netflix-desktop were downloaded.

Firefox and Silverlight are then downloaded.

I'm asked to install ttf-mscorefonts-installer. I am not prompted with any EULA to accept, no output it terminal. Then I am told "it appears I still have not installed" the required fonts even though the package ttf-mscorefonts-installer is installed.

Manually installing the package prior to running netflix-desktop anew does not resolve the problem.

I have a .netflix-desktop file in my /home from my previous Ubuntu installation before moving to Debian.

Please let me know if there's any further information I can provide.

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

The way that I'm checking for the font installation is to run:
debconf-show ttf-mscorefonts-installer 2>/dev/null | grep "msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula: true
Could you please send me the output of?:
debconf-show ttf-mscorefonts-installer

[Andrew Checketts (theminizoo)]

I'm running into the same issue.

[root@mepis3 /]# debconf-show ttf-mscorefonts-installer
  msttcorefonts/http_proxy:
  msttcorefonts/dlurl:
  msttcorefonts/savedir:
  msttcorefonts/baddldir:
  msttcorefonts/dldir:
[root@mepis3 /]#

Thanks for all your hard work btw!

[Sam L. (somethinginteres)]

Erich,
I am getting the same output as Andrew.

$ debconf-show ttf-mscorefonts-installer
  msttcorefonts/http_proxy:
  msttcorefonts/dlurl:
  msttcorefonts/savedir:
  msttcorefonts/baddldir:
  msttcorefonts/dldir:

Thanks for responding so quickly!

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

Would one of you guys mind sending me the link to the package you use? I'm wondering if maybe Debian doesn't store the EULA acceptance the same way as Ubuntu.

[Sam L. (somethinginteres)]

Erich,
The version I have is found here: http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ttf-mscorefonts-installer

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

Ok, it looks like Debian doesn't flag that the package has properly installed everything. I'm hesitant to remove the check for this because a _lot_ of Ubuntu users don't properly install this package. Would you mind contacting the Debian maintainer of the package and see if they would come here and help us work on a solution?

[Andrew Checketts (theminizoo)]

Well, I'd be happy to contact the maintainer, *but* I did find a workaround thanks to the google gods. According to http://askubuntu.com/questions/16225/how-can-i-accept-microsoft-eula-agreement-for-ttf-mscorefonts-installer. Turns out if you run the command

echo ttf-mscorefonts-installer msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula select true | debconf-set-selections

You can trick it. I know this might not be the cleanest way to take care of the issue; however, after doing that, I can attest that Netflix-Desktop has now successfully ran on a Debian variant (specifically SimplyMepis 11.0 64bit). Congratulations. ;-)

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

Thanks Andrew, it would be best to work with the maintainer to find a solution that allows things to run "out of the box" without modifications. It'd be better to not have to trick the script :)

[Don Kramer (donkramer)]

Hi Erich, I just tried your packages built for Natty inside a Debian Squeeze VM. I can confirm the ttf-mscorefonts-installer bug and the workarond for Wheezy exists for Squeeze too. Based on what I experienced testing in the VM (Squeeze is my host too) got audio but no video, but I think that's related to trying to watch in Virtualbox ... so I may try to install it to Debian Squeeze on my host later. Would be looking forward if you have Debian Squeeze and Wheezy repos in the future. Unless the maintainer puts the fix to Squeeze backports scripting might be the only option.

[Sam L. (somethinginteres)]

Andrew,
Any update in regards to contacting the maintainer about this bug?

[Sam L. (somethinginteres)]

Hi all,
I've gone ahead and contacted the maintainer ttf-mscorefonts-installer, Thijs Kinkhorst. I've asked him to try and help us work out what is causing this bug. I will update as soon as I hear anything.

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

Hi Sam,

I currently have a new version of netflix-desktop queued for building that will detect that the fonts are loaded using fontconfig (thanks to Alec Leamas). Once that package builds you should be able to get past the font check as long as you have fontconfig installed.