Pradeep K. Pant Blog

Default Linux installation (Cent OS in this case) doesn’t contain true type fonts. The application like open office, PDF generators requires proper fonts to embed into if not it will use the free system fonts which can create a lot of issues like  pdf, not showing content properly etc. It’s always good idea to install ms core fonts Well you can buy more fonts as per your requirement if you want.

To install the ms core fonts follow the below steps (Login as a ROOT):

• Download cab extractor:cabextract-0.6-1.i386.rpm

Install RPM: Change the directory to download folder and run the follwing command:

#rpm -ivh cabextract-0.6-1.i386.rpm

• Download ms core fonts:msttcorefonts-1.3-4.spec

Create RPM: Change the directory to download folder and run the follwing command

#rpmbuild -bb msttcorefonts-1.3-4.spec

(This step will download Microsoft CAB files and extracts the fonts and builds an RPM.  This will use system utilities [wget, rpm-build, chkfontpath, fc-cache, ttmkfdir] and also check that http port 80 opened or not. This process will download the executable for all the font files.

This step will create RPM in /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/msttcorefonts-1.3-4.noarch.rpm

• Installing RPM: Change the directory to /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/ and run the follwing command

# rpm -ivh msttcorefonts-1.3-4.noarch.rpm

• Restart X server:

/sbin/service xfs restart

Now you can check the newly installed fonts on /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF

Important Note:  Sometimes you might need to modify the msttcorefonts-1.3-4.spec file  for adding new address of mscorefonts location in sourceforge.net.  If you still face problems downloading font file then you can use my own font RPM [msttcorefonts-1.3-4.noarch.rpm].  You can download and install directly using # rpm -ivh msttcorefonts-1.3-4.noarch.rpm.

Good Luck!