ttf-mscorefonts-installer fails to download fonts, returns 404 Not Found

[willy123]

Note that I am reporting this bug against the package "msttcorefonts", but it actually affects "ttf-mscorefonts-installer".

1) What I expect to happen: The ms core fonts should be downloaded and installed.

2) What actually happens: The installer attempts to download the fonts, but fails with a 404.

3) Error message:

root@host:~# apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ttf-mscorefonts-installer
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/29.5 kB of archives.
After this operation, 134 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously unselected package ttf-mscorefonts-installer.
(Reading database ... 316325 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.4+nmu1ubuntu2_all.deb ...
Unpacking ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) ...
Processing triggers for fontconfig (2.11.94-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Processing triggers for update-notifier-common (3.168.2) ...
ttf-mscorefonts-installer: processing...
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://freefr.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe 404 Not Found

E: Download Failed
Setting up ttf-mscorefonts-installer (3.4+nmu1ubuntu2) ...

4) Version info

root@host:~# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Release: 16.04

root@host:~# apt-cache policy ttf-mscorefonts-installer
ttf-mscorefonts-installer:
  Installed: 3.4+nmu1ubuntu2
  Candidate: 3.4+nmu1ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 3.4+nmu1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/multiverse amd64 Packages
        500 http://ch.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/multiverse i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

5) More hints:
The url reported by the installer actually works in the browser. My (un-educated) guess is that the error may be related to the whitespace in the redirect url. (".../corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe")

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 1607535, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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