On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 06:07:28PM +0100, Scott H. Hawley wrote: > I just installed XFree86 in a new installation of Debain (testing). > When I try to run it XFree86, I get an error: > > Fatal server error > could not open default font 'fixed' > > I've installed the xfonts-base (and of course xfree86-common) but I'm > still not having any luck. I looked for a font called "fixed", but I > only seem to find "100dpi", "75dpi", "Speedo", "Type1", "cyrillic", and > "misc". > Can you recommend a solution? "fixed" is the name of a font alias, so you won't find any file or directory by that name. Some font package -- and no one has yet been able to figure out which one -- is apparently managing to clobber the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias file. There are mechanisms in the Debian Policy for ensuring that this doesn't happen, but someone is not using them. What's probably happened is that some font package is shipping /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/fonts.alias as part of their package, and so when that package is upgraded or removed, the file is automatically deleted. Alternatively, there is a prerm or postrm script that is intentionally removing this file. Running the command update-fonts-alias misc as root should fix the problem. Anything you can do to help track down which package is clobbering the fonts.alias file will have my eternal gratitude. I'd really like to think that this isn't a problem that will affect potato->woody upgraders, but since I don't know which package is at fault, I have no justification for that, and I fear the impact of this rogue package may be large. The bottom line is that as long as xfonts-base is installed, you should never have this problem (well, unless you've configured the X server to use only a font server, and that font server is unavailable or unable to serve a "fixed" font...). Some rogue package is screwing things up. -- G. Branden Robinson | You should try building some of the Debian GNU/Linux | stuff in main that is branden@debian.org | modern...turning on -Wall is like http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | turning on the pain. -- James Troup
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