When starting gvim on a headless server (DISPLAY set to my workstation) it exits with the following message: $ gvim No fonts found; this probably means that the fontconfig library is not correctly configured. You may need to edit the fonts.conf configuration file. More information about fontconfig can be found in the fontconfig(3) manual page and on http://fontconfig.org This happens when gvim is configured with gtk; it runs (not entirely fine) with a basix X widget set. The gentoo box doesn't have any fonts installed (fontinfo will likely be different from those that the X server uses.) # emerge --info Portage 2.1-r2 (default-linux/amd64/2006.1, gcc-4.1.1, glibc-2.4-r3, 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.17-gentoo-r7 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+ Gentoo Base System version 1.12.4 app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present] dev-lang/python: 2.4.3-r1 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: [Not Present] dev-util/confcache: [Not Present] sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.17 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r3 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-Os -pipe" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-Os -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/os/linux/gentoo ftp://mirror.scarlet-internet.nl/pub/gentoo http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="amd64 berkdb bitmap-fonts cli crypt cups dlloader dri fortran gdbm gnome gpm gtk ipv6 isdnlog libg++ mmap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly pam pcre perl postgres ppds pppd python readline reflection session spl ssl tcpd tetex truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode xorg zlib elibc_glibc input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse input_devices_evdev kernel_linux userland_GNU video_cards_apm video_cards_ark video_cards_ati video_cards_chips video_cards_cirrus video_cards_cyrix video_cards_dummy video_cards_fbdev video_cards_glint video_cards_i128 video_cards_i810 video_cards_mga video_cards_neomagic video_cards_nv video_cards_rendition video_cards_s3 video_cards_s3virge video_cards_savage video_cards_siliconmotion video_cards_sis video_cards_sisusb video_cards_tdfx video_cards_tga video_cards_trident video_cards_tseng video_cards_v4l video_cards_vesa video_cards_vga video_cards_via video_cards_vmware video_cards_voodoo" Unset: CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
The text of the error message can be found in /usr/lib64/libpangoft2-1.0.so which belongs to the x11-libs/pango-1.12.3 package.
Are you able to run any other gtk+ apps on this server successfully? I suspect this is an issue with gtk+ more than with gvim. Try this: $ sudo emerge zenity $ zenity --info If you see a popup box that says "All updates are complete.", then the issue is more likely with gvim, if not, than the issue is more likely with gtk (of which pango is a component).
Yes, this is a gtk+ (blame it on pango) bug. zenity --info gives the same error message. The function pango_fc_font_map_get_patterns in pango-1.12.3, file pango/pangofc-fontmap.c prints the message and performs an exit.
This seems to be more a problem with gtk+ / pango, not with vim, so I'm assigning it to the gnome herd.
I can't reproduce this bug with zenity (from gnome 2.18 though). If anyone could try again with gnome 2.16 to confirm either way. Thanks :)
Please try again with either Gnome 2.20 (current stable) or 2.22 (currently moving from overlay to portage) Thanks
