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Font path element unix/:-1

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John Egger

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Nov 4, 2002, 9:14:00 PM11/4/02
to
Continuation of my "could not open default font 'fixed': Still battling with
the M9 setup I damaged by trying to start PhotoPaint9 when logged in as
root...

Here's the tail end of my XFree86.0.log report:

***************
Could not init font path element unix/:-1, removing from list!

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

I can get the X Font Server to run, but startx produces the 570-line log
that finishes with the above.

There are a great many fonts listed under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts, but
maybe they (or the important one) is corrupt.
I do have a good Mandrake 9.0 installation (I'm using it now) and could copy
any files or directories that will fit on a 100M Zip disk and transfer them
to the other disk, if that would help clear up my other installation.

Thanks for your patience, guys. I know running that program on a newly
upgraded installation (from 8.1) was stupid.

--John

Kosh Vader

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Nov 4, 2002, 9:30:56 PM11/4/02
to
On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 02:14:00 GMT, John Egger <john....@att.net> wrote:

>Continuation of my "could not open default font 'fixed': Still battling with
>the M9 setup I damaged by trying to start PhotoPaint9 when logged in as
>root...
>
>Here's the tail end of my XFree86.0.log report:
>
>***************
>Could not init font path element unix/:-1, removing from list!
>
>Fatal server error:
>could not open default font 'fixed'
>******************
>
>I can get the X Font Server to run,

How... using something like "service xfs start"?

>but startx produces the 570-line log
>that finishes with the above.

You checked that it is really, using "ps ax | grep xfs"?

Or you could check with "netstat -plan | grep xfs"...

>Thanks for your patience, guys. I know running that program on a newly
>upgraded installation (from 8.1) was stupid.

Chris

Peter T. Breuer

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Nov 4, 2002, 9:46:58 PM11/4/02
to
John Egger <john....@att.net> wrote:
> Continuation of my "could not open default font 'fixed': Still battling with
> the M9 setup I damaged by trying to start PhotoPaint9 when logged in as
> root...

> Here's the tail end of my XFree86.0.log report:

> ***************
> Could not init font path element unix/:-1, removing from list!

Well, start your x font server! Or remove it from your fornt path (and
add in th edirectory entries instead).

> I can get the X Font Server to run, but startx produces the 570-line log

Then try harder.

> that finishes with the above.

Where's the surprise? If you don't have the font server, then remove it
from your font path. But what stops you starting it? /tmp full? If so,
delete stuff in it.

> There are a great many fonts listed under /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts, but
> maybe they (or the important one) is corrupt.

No. Should make no real difference. But you can check by reducing the
font path to juust the "misc" dir

> Thanks for your patience, guys. I know running that program on a newly
> upgraded installation (from 8.1) was stupid.

???


Peter

HoboSong

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Nov 4, 2002, 9:56:22 PM11/4/02
to
I believe it was John Egger who said...

> Continuation of my "could not open default font 'fixed': Still battling with
> the M9 setup I damaged by trying to start PhotoPaint9 when logged in as
> root...

(snip)

If Im not mistaken, removing this line from your XF86Config-4 file
will fix your problem...

FontPath "unix/:-1"

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris van Ophuijsen RLU #195880
use...@gnubin.com
put "HoboSong" in the subject
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim Sculley

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Nov 5, 2002, 9:32:19 AM11/5/02
to
HoboSong wrote:
> I believe it was John Egger who said...
>
>>Continuation of my "could not open default font 'fixed': Still battling with
>>the M9 setup I damaged by trying to start PhotoPaint9 when logged in as
>>root...
>
>
> (snip)
>
> If Im not mistaken, removing this line from your XF86Config-4 file
> will fix your problem...
>
> FontPath "unix/:-1"

Thats' treating the symptom, not the disease. And that is only the
first of two steps:

After commenting out the FontPath, you need to provide a new hard-coded
font path like this:

FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
....and so on....

Add any directories under fonts/ that suit you.

Note that this is really only a workaround, as the "unix/:-1" FontPath
*should* work, but for some reason does not for some people. For me,
the problem popped up when I installed XFree86 4.1 under Mandrabe 8.1,
but went away when I installed Mandrake 8.2 and I've had no problems
with 9.0.

Jim S.

John B. Egger

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Nov 5, 2002, 10:39:47 AM11/5/02
to
HoboSong wrote:

> I believe it was John Egger who said...
>> Continuation of my "could not open default font 'fixed': Still battling
>> with the M9 setup I damaged by trying to start PhotoPaint9 when logged in
>> as root...
>
> (snip)
>
> If Im not mistaken, removing this line from your XF86Config-4 file
> will fix your problem...
>
> FontPath "unix/:-1"
>
>

Thanks! I'm now posting from that installation! I'll make the changes that
Jim suggests shortly.

My problem now is that when I try to start as User I'm getting a /tmp full
message, "KDE3 can't start." A "localhost" graphical login screen then
appears and I can then run KDE3 as Root. (Yes... that's what I'm doing
now.) My /home/john/tmp directory appears empty, and that seems to be where
the problem is.

--John

Jim Sculley

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Nov 5, 2002, 2:04:15 PM11/5/02
to

No, the problem appears to be /tmp. In fact, a full /tmp directory can
lead to exactly the error you originally described. Have a lok in /tmp,
delete anything you don't want (i.e. everything), put your XF86Config-4
back to the way it was, and see what happens.

If the problem isn't solved, you can simply make the changes again and
get on with life.

In my case, it wasn't a full /tmp, and I never did determine the true cause.


Jim S.

John B. Egger

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Nov 5, 2002, 5:01:37 PM11/5/02
to
Jim Sculley wrote:

Jim, thanks for your patience. Commenting out the "unix/:-1" actually
wasn't very satisfactory, like limping home on two cylinders.

Whether using the graphical "home" icon (with "show hidden files") or a
terminal window with ls -l -C /tmp, the /home/john/tmp directory looked
empty (0 directories, 0 files). The (top-level) /tmp directory had a few
Megabytes of files that I wasn't able to delete, but I don't think that
/tmp is the problem anyway.

Is there a command that will really empty out the /tmp directories? All I
know are rm and rd, and rm doesn't work when there don't seem to be any
files.

This is being posted from my other hard disk cartridge, with a fresh M9
installation.

--John

John B. Egger

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Nov 5, 2002, 5:09:09 PM11/5/02
to
Kosh Vader wrote:

Chris,

I used /etc/init.d/xfs start, and got a "X Font Server [OK]" message, so I
assumed that meant it was running. However, I got the following:

ps -aux | grep xfs
root 2359 0.0 0.3 1668 592 vc/1 S 15:33 0:00 grep xfs

and running ps ax | grep xfs simply returned the root prompt.

I presume that means xfs isn't actually running?

As my reply to Jim above reported, I can't find any files at all in
/home/john/tmp, so any attempt to empty it out has failed. There are a
few megs of files in the top-level /tmp directory, but I don't think
that's a problem.

--John

HoboSong

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Nov 5, 2002, 5:24:04 PM11/5/02
to
I believe it was John B. Egger who said...

> As my reply to Jim above reported, I can't find any files at all in
> /home/john/tmp, so any attempt to empty it out has failed. There are a
> few megs of files in the top-level /tmp directory, but I don't think
> that's a problem.

Did you not get an error reporting that /tmp was too full? Your system
could not care less about any "tmp" in your /home partition. /tmp is
special, and that is likely to cause troubles if it is full. I recommend
you clear out /tmp.

Kosh Vader

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Nov 5, 2002, 5:57:10 PM11/5/02
to
On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 22:09:09 GMT, "John B. Egger" <john....@att.net>
wrote:

>Kosh Vader wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 02:14:00 GMT, John Egger <john....@att.net> wrote:

>>>Here's the tail end of my XFree86.0.log report:
>>>
>>>***************
>>>Could not init font path element unix/:-1, removing from list!
>>>
>>>Fatal server error:
>>>could not open default font 'fixed'
>>>******************
>>>
>>>I can get the X Font Server to run,
>>
>> How... using something like "service xfs start"?
>>
>>>but startx produces the 570-line log
>>>that finishes with the above.
>>
>> You checked that it is really, using "ps ax | grep xfs"?

>I used /etc/init.d/xfs start, and got a "X Font Server [OK]" message, so I

>assumed that meant it was running. However, I got the following:
>
>ps -aux | grep xfs
>root 2359 0.0 0.3 1668 592 vc/1 S 15:33 0:00 grep xfs
>
>and running ps ax | grep xfs simply returned the root prompt.
>
>I presume that means xfs isn't actually running?

Check with "/var/log/message" or "/var/log/syslog" to see if any recent
messages about xfs show up? Are there, and what are they... errors?

>As my reply to Jim above reported, I can't find any files at all in
>/home/john/tmp,

The "xfs" service creates a socket "/tmp/.font-unix/fs-1". Verify that
that is there. Can you post "ls -la /tmp/.font-unix"?

>so any attempt to empty it out has failed. There are a
>few megs of files in the top-level /tmp directory, but I don't think
>that's a problem.

Why do you say that?

All that the "xfs" service takes about is having a unix socket in
"/tmp", so any space issues in "/tmp" should be be a problem with "xfs".

Chris

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