Regression bug: can't preseed download location

[Ballock]

For some time already we have been using preseed to specify our local repository containing the Microsoft fonts. The main reason for this is that we have a pretty complicated proxy environment and it's much easier to provide the local repository directly.

So we have used those preseed entries:
ttf-mscorefonts-installer msttcorefonts/dlurl string http://@HOSTNAME@@DIRECTORY@/msttcorefonts/
ttf-mscorefonts-installer msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula boolean true

The postinst script says it all:
# FIXME: we don't have a way to use an alternate download source here.
db_get msttcorefonts/dlurl
URLOVERRIDE=$RET

The rules file seems to generate a static URLROOT pointing to http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/ and the URLOVERRIDE is ignored.

Our 12.04 workstations have some real issues with that. We have not worked that around yet.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Siggi Langauf (s-langauf)]

Okay, as this is a real showstopper here, I've just forked the package locally and applied the following changes to fix the issue:

First, I added a little snippet to postinst in order to pull in the override URL from debconf:

diff -u msttcorefonts-3.4ubuntu3/debian/postinst msttcorefonts-hotfix/debian/postinst.in
--- msttcorefonts-3.4ubuntu3/debian/postinst 2012-04-07 22:49:32.000000000 +0200
+++ msttcorefonts-hotfix/debian/postinst.in 2012-08-24 14:49:45.000000000 +0200
@@ -6,10 +6,21 @@
 db_get msttcorefonts/dldir
 LOCALCOPY=$RET

-# FIXME: we don't have a way to use an alternate download source here.
+URLROOT=#URLROOT#
 db_get msttcorefonts/dlurl
 URLOVERRIDE=$RET

+if test -n "$URLOVERRIDE"; then
+ DLFILE=/usr/share/package-data-downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer
+ echo "substituting $URLOVERRIDE for corefonts download URL..."
+ SEARCH=$(echo "$URLROOT"|sed -e 's/\//\\\//g')
+ REPLACE=$(echo "$URLOVERRIDE"|sed -e 's/\//\\\//g')
+ sed -e "s/$SEARCH/$REPLACE/" <$DLFILE >$DLFILE.new \
+ && mv $DLFILE.new $DLFILE
+ echo "dlurl sed -e \"s/^Url: .*(\/[^/]+.exe)/Url: $REPLACE\1/\" <$DLFILE >$DLFILE.new"
+ cp $DLFILE /usr/local/ttf-mscorefonts-installer.dlfile
+fi
+
 stamp_file=/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer

 if dpkg --compare-versions "$2" lt-nl 3.4ubuntu3 \

As you may have noted, I had to rename "debian/postinst" to "debian/postinst.in" in order to be able to add the base URL from debian/rules during package build time. One could just repeat the URL in debian/postinst, which I found too error-prone. The following line in debian/rules generates postinst from postinst.in:

diff -u msttcorefonts-3.4ubuntu3/debian/rules msttcorefonts-hotfix/debian/rules
--- msttcorefonts-3.4ubuntu3/debian/rules 2012-04-09 07:05:54.000000000 +0200
+++ msttcorefonts-hotfix/debian/rules 2012-08-24 15:36:18.000000000 +0200
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
        dh $@

 override_dh_auto_install:
+ sed -e 's/#URLROOT#/'$$(echo $(URLROOT)|sed -e 's/\//\\\//g')'/' <debian/postinst.in >debian/postinst
        mkdir -p debian/tmp/usr/share/package-data-downloads
        while read sum file; do \
                echo "Url: $(URLROOT)$$file"; \

Hope that somebody picks this up soon...

[Siggi Langauf (s-langauf)]

Ooops, the patch in above comment did contain two lines of debugging that should really not be in there.

Attached is a complete patch for the issue. It should be ready to apply with "patch -p1" from the source dir.

Don't forget to remove the now-generated debian/postinst from the patched source and to add the correct signature to debian/changelog!

Hope that helps speed things up...

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "complete patch for the issue" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch in the form of a debdiff. The ubuntu-sponsors team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review and hopefully sponsor the debdiff. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-sponsors team please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by Brian Murray. Please contact him regarding any issues with the action taken in this bug report.]

[Jamie Strandboge (jdstrand)]

Thanks for your patch! Unfortunately, it cannot be included in Ubuntu for the following reasons:
 * it ships a new postinst.in which is used to update postinst via a sed in debian/rules. This is messy and postinst should be adjusted directly with no changes to debian/rules or the additional file.
 * the file postinst.in intends to update /usr/share/package-data-downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer via some brittle regular expressions and sed calls (fyi, you might be interested in 'sed -i' for future scripting). A better solution is to simply adjust update-ms-fonts to honor URLOVERRIDE

Unsubscribing ubuntu-sponsors for now. Please feel free to update and mark this bug back to 'NEW' and resubscribing ubuntu-sponsors after updating the patch. Thanks again.

[Thijs Kinkhorst (kink)]

Removed patch tag as per above.

[Margarita Manterola (marga-9)]

Hi, it's been almost a year and this bug is still present. This is a serious regression, it would be nice if trusty wouldn't be released with it.

[Margarita Manterola (marga-9)]

Another year has passed and the bug is still present...

[linuxball (linuxball)]

I have Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS (xenial) and ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2).

More than FOUR years have passed and this bug is still not fixed. And it is even worse now: This version does not work any longer with the hard-wired download URLs (which are forwarded to other URLs):

E: Failed to fetch https://vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe 404 Not Found

[Horst Schirmeier (horst)]

Still broken in 16.10 (yakkety).

[...]
ttf-mscorefonts-installer: downloading http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
Err: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: Permission denied)
E: Failed to fetch https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the?download&failedmirror=vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net 404 Not Found
E: Download Failed

Workaround: Use the Debian package instead (or completely replace Ubuntu with Debian while you're at it ...).
wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/m/msttcorefonts/ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb