failing to find fonts: dexconf writes bogus FontPaths

Bug #63408 reported by Luca Ferretti
142
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
exim4 (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
xorg (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

I updated my system from dapper to edgy. Now all "pure" X applications are unable to start or properly start due to missing charset in fonts.

Example 1

luca@redrum:~$ xfontsel
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion
Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset
Error: Aborting: no font found

Example 2

Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font

[emacs starts, but all characters in edit area are squares

Revision history for this message
Luca Ferretti (elle.uca) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Luca Ferretti (elle.uca) wrote :

Forgot to mention: I tried to fix the issue I reported in bug 63373 manually creating symlinks to missing directories and reinstalling relevant xfont* package. This can't help.

Revision history for this message
Luca Ferretti (elle.uca) wrote :

I found the reason.

Fonts (not managed by fontconfig, but only by Xserver) are installed under /usr/share/fonts/X11/ (as well as encondings). The /ect/X11/xorg.conf file instead uses as FontPath the path /usr/share/X11/fonts/. In this path there are the usual 100dpi/ 75dpi/ misc/ and Type1/ directories, but they are empty.

Running a 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg' can't help :-(

Revision history for this message
Dave Love (fx-gnu) wrote :

Here's a fix. The relevant package is x11-common.

Dave Love (fx-gnu)
Changed in xorg:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Ketil Malde (ketil-ii) wrote :

Got the same thing with ion3 failing to start. I fixed it by moving the old directory out of the way, and making a symlink from the old (xorg.conf) font dir to the new dir.

Revision history for this message
Dave Love (fx-gnu) wrote :

Ketil Malde <email address hidden> writes:

> Got the same thing with ion3 failing to start. I fixed it by moving
> the old directory out of the way, and making a symlink from the old
> (xorg.conf) font dir to the new dir.

But it's xorg.conf that is/gets broken, not the directory structure,
as far as I know. It's a pity this didn't get fixed for the release.

Revision history for this message
Iain Murray (ubuntu-iainmurray) wrote :

Dave Love's patch works for me (thanks very much). I'm left wondering why this hasn't been fixed.

Revision history for this message
Felipe Figueiredo (philsf) wrote :

Why not just make /usr/share/X11/fonts/ a symlink to /usr/share/fonts/X11/?

It would make it simpler so that all fonts would end up in the big "fonts directory".

Revision history for this message
Dave Love (fx-gnu) wrote :

Felipe Figueiredo <email address hidden> writes:

> Why not just make /usr/share/X11/fonts/ a symlink to
> /usr/share/fonts/X11/?
>
> It would make it simpler so that all fonts would end up in the big
> "fonts directory".

Making random links to compensate for a bug which has a simple fix
available doesn't seem to make like making it simpler.

I'm baffled why someone won't just fix dexconf.

Revision history for this message
Adam Funk (a-funk) wrote :

> Why not just make /usr/share/X11/fonts/ a symlink
> to /usr/share/fonts/X11/?
>
> It would make it simpler so that all fonts would end
> up in the big "fonts directory".

There are different files in the two directories, so the packagers of all the fonts would have to consolidate them all in one place before making the symlink.

Revision history for this message
Simon Law (sfllaw) wrote :

This is a pretty terrible bug. Dexconf appears to have been fixed in Debian a while ago, so we should do the same.

Changed in xorg:
importance: Undecided → High
Revision history for this message
Sorush.Nazari (s-nazari) wrote :

I have the same problem with xmbmon, here is the error I get.
Can't find font: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
I tries to see if I could start ion3. I did:
apt-get install io3
then
ion3
and got this error
>> Unable to redirect root window events for screen 0.
>> Refusing to start due to encountered errors.
Warning: Unable to load any usable ISO8859 font
I have tried to apply the differences that the above fix suggests to my /usr/bin/dexconf but I still can not run either xmbmon or io3 I get the same error. The differences between my files and suggested fix are the directory structure of the fonts which are different.

Revision history for this message
Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton) wrote :

this is fixed by xorg_7.2-0ubuntu1 upload to feisty. Dexconf writes correct Fontpaths now, but we don't mess around with the old configs, that would just be too ugly. Instead, the server can look in both places for fonts.

Changed in xorg:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)
Changed in exim4:
status: New → Invalid
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