[Bug 1655431] Re: update-notifier / ttf-mscorefonts-installer download failure (regression)

[Adrien Beau]

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 \
  download-file \
  http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe \
  /tmp/andale32.exe \
  SHA256:0524fe42951adc3a7eb870e32f0920313c71f170c859b5f770d82b4ee111e970

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
  The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header
E: Failed to fetch https://netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe  The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header
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 \
  download-file \
  https://netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/andale32.exe \
  /tmp/andale32.exe \
  SHA256:0524fe42951adc3a7eb870e32f0920313c71f170c859b5f770d82b4ee111e970

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.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to update-notifier in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1655431

Title:
  update-notifier / ttf-mscorefonts-installer download failure
  (regression)

Status in update-notifier package in Ubuntu:
  New

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-installer. Previously it was working fine on the same
  system.

  This seems to affect a lot of desktop users, but the issue is usually
  misdiagnosed on forums because it is attributed to ttf-mscorefonts-
  installer and not to update-notifier-common.

  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-installer
  installed, and running:

      sudo dpkg-reconfigure update-notifier-common

  The error messages seem to be random but actually appear to be
  consistent for a given download source:

  * freefr.dl.sourceforge.net: 404  Not Found
  * kent.dl.sourceforge.net: Protocol "http" not supported or disabled in libcurl
  * netassist.dl.sourceforge.net: The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header Bad header data [IP: 62.205.134.42 80]
  * netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net: The HTTP server sent an invalid Content-Range header
  * netix.dl.sourceforge.net: 404  Not Found
  * vorboss.dl.sourceforge.net: 404  Not Found

  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-
  installer triggers 11 downloads in a row, chances of randomly getting
  11 working mirrors are very low.

  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-installer has been installed (just fine) on
  September 26th, and not upgraded since then.

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/+bug/1655431/+subscriptions