Comment 2 for bug 464422

Problem appears because ttf-mscorefonts-installer always tries to download fonts from internet servers, without asking if user wants to do this. This problem is related to bug #84453. Few years ago msttcorefonts always asked user before downloading fonts, but Debian or Ubuntu developers changed this behavior and now lots of users run into problems because of this.
I just tried to upgrade my Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty" to 9.10 "Karmic" and upgrading procedure failed because of bad ttf-mscorefonts-installer behavior - I disconnected my computer from internet access after update-manager downloaded all needed karmic packages.

So, ttf-mscorefonts-installer should ask if user wanna get non-free fonts from internet during installation/configuration of package ttf-mscorefonts-installer and also package shouldn't return an error if there are no access to corefonts download servers - I think ttf-mscorefonts-installer should display a dialog with buttons "Try again" and "Download later" (run dpkg-reconfigure ttf-mscorefonts-installer when you will have internet connection).
This would fix not only this bug, but also lots of similar bugs, reported by ubuntu users, for example bug #319623, bug #246902, bug #453366, bug #464422, bug #464365, bug #464322 and several others, see https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/msttcorefonts/+bugs