X.org: Fatal server error

[Harald Weis]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 12:29:13PM -0800, Joseph Olatt wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 10:37:02AM +0100, Harald Weis wrote:
> > On Sun, Feb 10, 2008 at 06:13:33PM -0800, Joseph Olatt wrote:
> > > On Thu, Feb 07, 2008 at 01:44:03PM +0100, Harald Weis wrote:
  
> > > I would check and see if you have the following packages installed:
> > > 1. font-misc-misc
> > > 2. font-cursor-misc
> >  
> > They are installed alright, like all other packages containing the
> > pattern ``font'' in their name.
> 
> 
> If "font-misc-misc" and "font-cursor-misc" are installed, I would do the
> following:
> 
> 1. Check "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc" directory to see if there are
>    font files there. In my case, that is where the fonts from package
>    "font-misc-misc" and "font-cursor-misc" got installed.  
>    (pkg_info -L font-misc-misc-1.0.0 would tell you where the fonts 
>     got installed.)
> 
> 2. Check the xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf for me) to see if you have a
>    section similar to the following:
> 
>    Section "Files"
>        RgbPath      "/usr/local/share/X11/rgb"
>        ModulePath   "/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules"
>        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
>        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
>        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF"
>        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
>        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
>        FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
>    EndSection
> 
> 
>    If the line 'FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"' does not
>    exist, you could get the fixed font error.

Finally, I've found the real reason for the empty fonts.dir file in
misc/ (and 100dpi/, 75dpi, cyrillic): a lot of .pcf.gz files were indeed
present, but I've not spotted that they were empty ! Shame on me.

They must have been created (time stamp: Feb 3) during the xorg-upgrade
procedure (described in the /usr/ports/UPDATING), but all empty,
God knows why.

misc/ is now populated with all the fonts created by the following packages:
font-arabic-misc-1.0.0
font-cursor-misc-1.0.0
font-daewoo-misc-1.0.0
font-dec-misc-1.0.0
font-isas-misc-1.0.0
font-jis-misc-1.0.0
font-micro-misc-1.0.0
font-misc-cyrillic-1.0.0
font-misc-ethiopic-1.0.0
font-misc-meltho-1.0.0_1
font-misc-misc-1.0.0
font-mutt-misc-1.0.0
font-schumacher-misc-1.0.0
font-sony-misc-1.0.0
font-sun-misc-1.0.0
xorg-fonts-miscbitmaps-7.3 (meta package: no output from `pkg_info -L')

The fonts.dir file contains now exactly 340 `fixed' fonts.
There is no owner or permission problem whatsoever.
And still, whether I follow strictly the method described in the Handbook
or whether I use my own method with xinit and $HOME/.xinitrc
the X server makes always the same complaint:

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

The output of 'truss -fae  startx' does not show why on earth the server
cannot open the default font.

It seems hopeless. I've never encountered such a bug.

Is there really no other solution than the Windows-approach:
Reinstall xorg from scratch ?

Thanks in advance for every other idea.

Harald
-- 
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p2 #0: Tue Feb 27 22:56:09 UTC 2007