After doing a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.04 and installing all pending updates via Update Manager, I get an error that starts like this:
Setting up ttf-opensymbol (2.2.0-1ubuntu4) ...
Updating fontconfig cache...
/usr/share/fonts: failed to write cache
/usr/share/fonts/X11: failed to write cache
I’ve had this occur on several machines, and the md5 on the .iso checks out ok, so it’s a bug (Bug 104553, Bug 122976) caused by incorrect dates on the font cache. There’s a solution documented here, but it needs a bit of fixing:
$ sudo bash
# wget -O folder_list.txt http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=28956&d=1175696100
# cat folder_list.txt | xargs touch
# cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
# for i in * ; do touch ${i}; done
# cd /var/lib/defoma/fontconfig.d
# for i in * ; do touch ${i}; done
# apt-get dist-upgrade
Another post suggests this simpler solution:
$ sudo bash
# find /usr/share/fonts /usr/local/share/fonts /var/lib/defoma/fontconfig.d -type d -print0 | xargs --null touch
9 September 2007
/usr/share/fonts: failed to write cache
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sonia hamilton - linux, brazilian jiu jitsu 
Same thing after updating a fresh install of 7.10 today (2 jan 2008)
Solved like this:
#cd /var/lib/defoma/fontconfig.d
#sudo touch *
#apt-get install
Voila!
Comment by Tycho — 2 January 2008 @ 08:27 |
This worked great for me on a new install of gutsy. Thanks!
Comment by harper — 3 January 2008 @ 01:11 |
Thanks for this “howto”-fix,
works great 🙂
Comment by Mat — 3 February 2008 @ 09:40 |
Worked for me on Ubuntu 7.10:
find /usr/share/fonts /usr/local/share/fonts /var/lib/defoma/fontconfig.d -type d -print0 | sudo xargs –null touch
Comment by Rafael Gattringer — 13 July 2008 @ 10:21 |
Remark: –null consists of two hyphens!
— null
Comment by Rafael Gattringer — 13 July 2008 @ 10:24 |