Bug 139093 – xorg 7.0 fatal server error: could not open default font 'fixed'

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED INVALID

[Description Tiago Freire 2006-07-03 16:06:33 UTC]

stable xorg 7.0 is not working. The only error, at the end of Xorg.0.log, is the following:

Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/misc, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/75dpi, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/100dpi, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/local/, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/, removing from list!

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


the directories exist and there is 'stuff' in there, nevertheless they are not being recognized.

emerge --info:
Portage 2.1-r1 (default-linux/amd64/2006.0, gcc-3.4.6/amd64-vanilla, glibc-2.3.6-r3, 2.6.16-gentoo-r9 x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.16-gentoo-r9 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
Gentoo Base System version 1.6.15
distcc 2.18.3 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [disabled]
dev-lang/python:     2.3.5-r2, 2.4.2
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, 2.16.1-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r2
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="-march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/NX/etc /usr/NX/home /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/lib64/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/eselect/compiler /etc/gconf /etc/java-config/vms/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-march=k8 -O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.netnitco.net/pub/mirrors/gentoo/source/"
LINGUAS="pt_BR en"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
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.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="amd64 3dnowex X a52 aac acl acpi aim aimextras alsa apache2 arts artswrappersuid authdaemond automount avi berkdb bidi bitmap-fonts bluetooth bootsplash browserplugin bzip2 cairo calendar canna caps cdparanoia chroot cjki cli crypt css cups curl curlwrappers cvs dba dbus dga divx4linux dlloader doc dpms dri dv dvb dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss encode evo fbcon fbsplash ffmpeg firefox foomaticdb fortran ftp gd gif gmail gmailtimestamps gnome gnutls gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 hal i8x0 iconv imap imlib innodb interbase ipv6 isdnlog jabber java javascript jpeg jpeg2k kde kdeenablefinal kdehiddenvisibility kerberos lm_sensors lzw lzw-tiff maildir mailwrapper matroska mime mjpeg mmap mono mozdevelop mozsvg mp3 mpeg mpeg2 mpeg4 mplayer mppe-mppc msn multislot mysql ncurses nethack nls nptl nsplugin ntfs nvidia oav odbc offensive oggvorbis openal opengl oss pam pcntl pcre pda pdf pdflib perl php pic png posix postgres povray ppds pppd prelude profile python qemu-fast qt qt3 qt4 quicktime rdesktop readline reflection rtc ruby samba sasl screen sdl sensord session shared slp sndfile snmp soap sockets sox spell spl sql sqlite ssl subp subversion svg symlink tcpd theora threads tidy tiff tokenizer transcode truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb utf8 vcd vcdimager vda vhosts vim vim-pager vim-with-x virus-scan visualization vnc vorbis wddx web webdav wifi win32 xml xmlrpc xorg xpm xprint xscreensaver xsl xv yahoo zlib elibc_glibc input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse input_devices_aiptek kernel_linux linguas_pt_BR linguas_en userland_GNU video_cards_fbdev video_cards_nv video_cards_nvidia video_cards_vesa"
Unset:  CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

[Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-07-03 23:32:17 UTC]

/usr/lib/X11/fonts is completely wrong path for modular X. Fix your xorg.conf.

[Comment 2 Donnie Berkholz (RETIRED) 2006-07-04 00:11:12 UTC]

Couple of things for you to try:

ls -l /usr/lib/libXfont*

-- Make sure there is not libXfont.so.1.5, but rather 1.4.1

emerge font-util encodings font-alias font-misc-misc font-cursor-misc

-- To ensure all the proper files are installed in the right order. Seems portage may have some issues ordering large emerges.

[Comment 3 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) 2006-07-04 02:45:57 UTC]

*** Bug 139136 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Comment 4 Tiago Freire 2006-07-04 04:22:28 UTC]

<quote>
    /usr/lib/X11/fonts is completely wrong path for modular X. Fix your xorg.conf.
</quote>

I have moved aside my original xorg.conf and created a new one (xorgconfig). It created a path like you said. Should have used the right path, so xorgconfig has a problem too.
I also trying running xorgcfg, as well as running startx without a xorg.conf, as AFAIK, as of 7.0,  it should be smart enough and auto-detect. But none of these worked (All logs had the same error). Looks like the defaults are wrong...

[Comment 5 Tiago Freire 2006-07-04 07:33:28 UTC]

I guess it's not finding the font 'fixed' because bdftopcf is borked. I am also feeding info to bug 128613, even though it's marked RESOLVED INVALID, I am on xorg 7.0-r1 (stable, AMD64), followed the procedures to re-emerge bdftopcf, but it still has the unresolved symbol issue, so it does not work. To me, not being able to use bdftopcf to generate the fonts is a good reason for xorg not being able to find them :). 

[Comment 6 Robert Moerixbauer 2006-08-11 22:10:45 UTC]

Created attachment 94028 [details]
fonts.alias

compare with your /usr/share/fonts/misc/fonts.alias

[Comment 7 Robert Moerixbauer 2006-08-11 22:23:39 UTC]

Created attachment 94029 [details]
fonts.dir

Make sure you have both media-fonts/font-cursor-misc and media-fonts/font-misc-misc installed.

Even after repeted reinstalls it failed to generate the fonts.alias file correctly. I also noticed that there where was an error in the fonts.dir file it should contain 335 fonts, but only had 334.

Please compare your file with this one.

[Comment 8 Donnie Berkholz (RETIRED) 2006-09-05 16:29:58 UTC]

Is this still an issue. Please reopen if so.

[Comment 9 Tiago Freire 2006-09-06 05:01:57 UTC]

I have fixed it, it was because of the wrong libXfont version. let this bug die...

[Comment 10 Joshua Baergen (RETIRED) 2006-09-07 14:12:58 UTC]

Re-opening to change resolution...

[Comment 11 Joshua Baergen (RETIRED) 2006-09-07 14:13:38 UTC]

System was in an erroneous state.