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Is it possible to change a mirror where ttf-mscorefonts-installer downloads fonts from? Currently, e.g. http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/arial32.exe is blocked from my company office, but I can see that e.g. https://cfhcable.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final/arial32.exe works.

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  • @EliahKagan this answer is based on wget'ting those fonts from the same source - as I mentioned, this link is blocked from the office network, so how would wget work?
    – wojtek1902
    Aug 6, 2019 at 6:17
  • wget them from the other source instead. I've posted an answer about how to do that. Aug 6, 2019 at 10:02

1 Answer 1

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You can download the fonts from the mirror of your choosing, then run update-ms-fonts to use them. You won't want to download each one by hand, so you can use the procedure in Videonauth's answer to How to install the package ttf-mscorefonts-installer. Since that procedure, as written, would download the fonts with the downloads.sourceforge.net URLs you can't use, you'll have to change it to use the cfhcable.dl.sourceforge.net URLs. Here's a modified procedure:

  1. Install ttf-mscorefonts-installer in the usual way. That is, run these commands and accept the license:

    sudo apt update
    sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
    

    You may see this stall, typically for less than half a minute:

    0% [Connecting to downloads.sourceforge.net (216.105.38.13)]
    

    And then an error that looks like this:

    Err:1 http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe
      Could not connect to downloads.sourceforge.net:80 (216.105.38.13), connection timed out
    E: Failed to fetch http://downloads.sourceforge.net/corefonts/andale32.exe  Could not connect to downloads.sourceforge.net:80 (216.105.38.13), connection timed out
    E: Download Failed
    

    That's okay. At least currently, the installer doesn't continue to attempt to connect for subsequent files.

  2. Make a temporary directory and cd to it. I prefer to just create a tmp subdirectory of my home directory and delete it when I'm done. If you script this, you're better off making the directory in the way Videonauth suggests.

    mkdir ~/tmp
    cd ~/tmp
    

    If that directory already exists, I suggest not using it, deleting its contents, or at least making sure it doesn't have any files in it whose names end in .exe before continuing.

  3. Download the fonts, substituting the URLs you want to use. This is the part that differs importantly from the procedure in Videonauth's answer.

    awk '/Url/ {sub("downloads[.]sourceforge[.]net/corefonts","cfhcable.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the%20fonts/final",$2); system("wget "$2)}' /usr/share/package-data-downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer
    
  4. Run update-ms-fonts. This only accepts absolute paths (so you can't write *.exe instead of ~/tmp/*.exe). If your temporary directory isn't the tmp subdirectory of your home directory, adjust the command accordingly.

    sudo /usr/lib/msttcorefonts/update-ms-fonts ~/tmp/*.exe
    
  5. Update the timestamp on the file APT uses to determine what installation steps still need to be completed:

    sudo touch /var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer
    

    You should be able to use the fonts now, and you shouldn't get any Software Updater dialog boxes about how files need to be downloaded.

  6. Delete the temporary directory:

    cd
    rm -r tmp
    

Credit goes to Videonauth for writing that answer, from which this answer is derived.

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