Signal-desktop installation issue on Manjaro: configure hook font issue

[Loris]

Upon attempting to install the latest version of signal-desktop the program is able to be run and syncs with my iOS device during the final stages of the setup but eventually fails after attempting to “Run configure hook of “signal-desktop” snap if present”. It then automatically removes itself upon failure and generates the following error message:

error: cannot perform the following tasks:
*- Run configure hook of “signal-desktop” snap if present (run hook “configure”: *
-----
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/fonts.conf”, line 5: unknown element “its:rules”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/fonts.conf”, line 6: unknown element “its:translateRule”
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/fonts.conf”, line 6: invalid attribute ‘translate’
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/fonts.conf”, line 6: invalid attribute ‘selector’
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/fonts.conf”, line 7: invalid attribute ‘xmlns:its’
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/fonts.conf”, line 7: invalid attribute ‘version’
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/fonts.conf”, line 9: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-hinting-slight.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/10-scale-bitmap-fonts.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/20-unhint-small-vera.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/30-metric-aliases.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/40-nonlatin.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/45-generic.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/45-latin.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/49-sansserif.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/50-user.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/51-local.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/60-generic.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/60-latin.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/65-nonlatin.conf”, line 4: unknown element “description”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf”, line 4: unknown element “its:rules”
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf”, line 5: unknown element “its:translateRule”
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf”, line 5: invalid attribute ‘translate’
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf”, line 5: invalid attribute ‘selector’
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf”, line 6: invalid attribute ‘xmlns:its’
Fontconfig error: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf”, line 6: invalid attribute ‘version’
Fontconfig warning: “/etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf”, line 8: unknown element “description”
/usr/share/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 2 fonts, 15 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/100dpi: caching, new cache contents: 398 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/75dpi: caching, new cache contents: 398 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/TTF: caching, new cache contents: 146 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/adobe-source-code-pro: caching, new cache contents: 30 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/cantarell: caching, new cache contents: 11 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/dina: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 2 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/dina/Dina-v2.93-otf: caching, new cache contents: 4 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/dina/Dina2: caching, new cache contents: 13 fonts, 1 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/dina/Dina2/BDF: /usr/share/fonts/dina/Dina2/BDF: error scanning
/usr/share/fonts/droid: caching, new cache contents: 27 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/encodings: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 1 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/encodings/large: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font: caching, new cache contents: 2 fonts, 4 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/MonteCarlo-BDF: caching, new cache contents: 2 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/MonteCarlo-PCF: caching, new cache contents: 2 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamsyn-font-1.11: caching, new cache contents: 14 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamzen-font: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 6 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamzen-font/bdf: caching, new cache contents: 35 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamzen-font/otb: caching, new cache contents: 28 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamzen-font/pcf: caching, new cache contents: 28 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamzen-font/png: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamzen-font/psf: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/font/tamzen-font/ttf: caching, new cache contents: 28 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/gsfonts: caching, new cache contents: 35 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/liberation: caching, new cache contents: 12 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/misc: caching, new cache contents: 32 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/noto: caching, new cache contents: 511 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/noto-cjk: caching, new cache contents: 73 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/util: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/local/share/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/var/snap/signal-desktop/common/fontconfig: cleaning cache directory
/var/cache/fontconfig: not cleaning unwritable cache directory
/snap/signal-desktop/344/gnome-platform/usr/bin/fc-cache: failed
-----)

So far I have tried clearing the font caches as suggested in another forum post (Snapped app not loading fonts on Fedora (and Arch)) to no avail.

I have added a few of my own fonts of course although I’m not sure how to negotiate that with snap.

Not sure why the app appears to install and run fine prior to attempting to execute the configure hook nor why it fails, has anyone else experienced this issue?

[Loris]

Also Merry Christmas everyone!

[Loris]

For anyone still struggling to get this installation working via snap and looking for a workaround the latest version of this can be downloaded from the following link and likely built for Arch/Manjaro using Debtap (haven’t tested yet): https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/pool/main/s/signal-desktop/signal-desktop_1.39.4_amd64.deb

Otherwise the latest version of Signal (1.39.4) can be downloaded from the testing or unstable branches of the Manjaro repositories using the following commands:

sudo pacman-mirrors --api --set-branch testing # change branch to testing or unstable sudo pacman-mirrors --fasttrack 5 && sudo pacman -Syyu # rebuild mirror list + update packages sudo pacman -S signal-desktop # install signal-desktop package from testing branch

Below is a link for more information:

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Switching_Branches

Despite these being effective workarounds I would still very much like to know what the issue with snap is

[ogra]

Default Chromium fonts are missing after snapd has been updated

So this is interesting, this directory inside the snap is actually a bind mount from the host system, so what I would be curious to see is if you make this directory temporarily empty and then re-run things if it works. We have talked about getting rid of or otherwise disabling this mounting code in snapd because most snaps now shouldn’t need it since they will be using their own snap-private font caches, so perhaps we need to do that. Can you try the following and see what happens: snap disa…

has a workaround …

[Loris]

If the installation had succeeded this might be a suitable workaround, but it unfortunately didn’t and this workaround is not applicable.

[ijohnson]

You can try the steps at the end about mounting the tmpfs before trying to install the snap, specifically:

sudo mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /var/cache/fontconfig
snap install ...