[Bug 876298] Re: [FFe] [MASTER] We need to better handle external payloads (Flash, msttcorefonts) not being available.

[Kate Stewart]

Approved.  Please try to land this between March 30 and April 5, so we can get as much testing on it as possible.
It would be good to get this sorted before the archive starts getting with the release.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to msttcorefonts in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/876298

Title:
  [FFe] [MASTER] We need to better handle external payloads (Flash,
  msttcorefonts) not being available.

Status in “flashplugin-nonfree” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “msttcorefonts” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “update-notifier” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  At the 11.10 release archive.canonical.com collapsed under heavy load
  and started returning 503 errors.  This caused the flash package to be
  unable to grab its payload and thus caused the package to fail, which
  in turn caused the installation to fail.

  The current plan is to add metadata to a package where it can add a
  URL to retrieve its data, so ubiquity and apt-get --download-only can
  cache it.  We also need a way to queue up package installation post-
  install, for when we commit to installing flash but cannot do so due
  to network issues, or when the user wishes to have full language
  support post-install.

  This change requires a freeze exception for precise, as it involves
  adding new features to update-notifier and significant reworking of
  the maintainer scripts for the affected packages.  It also introduces
  new UI components; however these UI components are only visible in the
  event of a failure, so I don't think we should block on UI freeze for
  making this change given the significant benefit to the install
  experience when a download fails.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/876298/+subscriptions