apt-helper / update-notifier / ttf-mscorefonts-installer download failure (regression)
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
apt (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
* OS release: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
* Package version: 3.168.3
For the past few days (maybe even weeks for other users), update-notifier has been very repeatedly failing to handle the downloads for ttf-mscorefonts
This seems to affect a lot of desktop users, but the issue is usually misdiagnosed on forums because it is attributed to ttf-mscorefonts
The issue is made particularly irritating because the update-notifier cron job tries and fails and notifies users daily of this failure.
The issue can be reproduced by having ttf-mscorefonts
sudo dpkg-reconfigure update-
The error messages seem to be random but actually appear to be consistent for a given download source:
* freefr.
* kent.dl.
* netassist.
* netcologne.
* netix.dl.
* vorboss.
In all above cases, the reported failing URL can be downloaded just fine using wget.
Some other mirrors appear to work (unfortunately, mirror names are only printed in case of errors). However, since ttf-mscorefonts
I am tagging this as regression-update because the issue started happening when upgrading from 3.168.2 to 3.168.3 last Friday. It is of course entirely possible the root cause is in another package, but this would also likely be a regression-update, since I am very careful about system-wide changes on this machine.
The previous update from 3.168.1 to 3.168.2 on November 4th went just fine. ttf-mscorefonts
description: | updated |
Digging into update- notifier- common, it appears the actual failure can be reduced to the following command-line (for 1 of the 11 downloads):
/usr/lib/ apt/apt- helper \ downloads. sourceforge. net/corefonts/ andale32. exe \ 0524fe42951adc3 a7eb870e32f0920 313c71f170c859b 5f770d82b4ee111 e970
download-file \
http://
/tmp/andale32.exe \
SHA256:
Output for a mirror that works:
Get:1 http:// downloads. sourceforge. net/corefonts/ andale32. exe [198 kB]
Fetched 198 kB in 2s (94,3 kB/s)
Output for a mirror that fails:
Err:1 http:// downloads. sourceforge. net/corefonts/ andale32. exe /netcologne. dl.sourceforge. net/project/ corefonts/ the fonts/final/ andale32. exe The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header
The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header
E: Failed to fetch https:/
E: Download Failed
Interestingly, running apt-helper with the redirected URL, after taking care to %-encode the space in the URL, works!
/usr/lib/ apt/apt- helper \ /netcologne. dl.sourceforge. net/project/ corefonts/ the%20fonts/ final/andale32. exe \ 0524fe42951adc3 a7eb870e32f0920 313c71f170c859b 5f770d82b4ee111 e970
download-file \
https:/
/tmp/andale32.exe \
SHA256:
But it gets weirder!
Running the very same command (downloading again from netcologne) results in the "invalid Content-Range" failure. Removing the target file, the download works again.
Running the command for another mirror (netix instead of netcologne) first works (same as netcologne). But then, running the very same command results in a "Protocol "http" not supported or disabled in libcurl" error! Removing the target file, the download works again.
To summarize my findings:
* Running apt-helper on http:// downloads. sourceforge. net/corefonts/ andale32. exe most often fails (it seems to handle the redirect to the mirror, but maybe fails to encode the space in the redirect URL)
* Running apt-helper on the mirror URL (with %20 instead of space in the URL) works if and only if the target file on the local system does not exist
* Running apt-helper on the mirror URL when the target file already exists results in various mysterious errors
All in all, it looks to me like apt-helper is a bit broken.
apt-helper is part of the apt package. The version currently on my system is 1.2.15ubuntu0.2. It was updated from 1.2.15 to 1.2.15ubuntu0.2 on December 14th.