*BSD News Article 9444


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From: rich@Rice.edu (& Murphey)
Subject: Re: Font Problems with Xfree86
In-Reply-To: DS1437@acspr1.acs.brockport.edu's message of 30 Dec 1992 16:01:37 -0600
Message-ID: <RICH.92Dec30222620@superego.Rice.edu>
Sender: news@rice.edu (News)
Reply-To: Rich@rice.edu
Organization: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice
	University
References: <9212302201.AA01419@deepthought.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 04:26:20 GMT
Lines: 48

>>>>> In article <9212302201.AA01419@deepthought.cs.utexas.edu>, DS1437@acspr1.acs.brockport.edu writes:
R>From: rich@Rice.edu (& Murphey)
R>Subject: Re: Xfree86 Font directory problem?
R>>>>>> In article <9212300215.AA00524@deepthought.cs.utexas.edu>, DS1437@acspr1.acs.brockport.edu writes:
R>D> NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu
R>
R>D>     I am having problems getting Xfree86 running, it seems to initiaize
R>D> the screen fine , but then switches back to text, and hangs the console
R>D> port (still can telnet in). I found out that there is an error that
R>D> the server is reporting but never showing, I can only get this error on
R>D> a system that is telneted in, it is:
R>
R>D> failed to set default font path '/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/X386
R>D> /lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/'
R>D> Fatal server error:
R>D> could not open default font 'fixed'
R>
R>The XFree86 1.1 server checks the font path  more thoroughly if you
R>set it in your Xconfig than if you use the default.  Try setting it:
R>
R>FontPath "/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
R>
R>and see if that helps.  We are working on improving this for the next
R>release.  Rich

D>     I think thats where the server was getting the name for the font
D> directories. Sorry I was going to include my Xconfig file in the message
D> too, but I forgot. Here it is --


D> #########################################################################
D> RGBPath                "/usr/X386/lib/X11/rgb"
D> FontPath         "/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
[...]

I was mistaken about the version 1.1 XFree86 server -- It doesn't
verify the font path at all.  So you need make sure that every
directory in your font path is a valid directory containing fonts.dir
file, etc.  You could simplify it to a single directory such as:

FontPath         "/usr/X386/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"

Another tip: the fonts distributed with the 386BSD binaries are
intensionally compressed.  If you uncompress them you must run
'mkfontdir' to rebuild the fonts.dir file.  Uncompressing them and
failing to do that could cause the "could not open default font
'fixed'" message.  Rich