X fonts

[Dan Serban <dserban@lodgingcompany.com>]

Hello all,

I've been using debian for ages it seems now and have one question that's
been nagging at me for a while.

Through X and in some cases on a local tty I get some odd characters.

This usually happens in a terminal in X (any of them) and when viewing web
pages through firefox or epiphany.

In the case of a browser, the best example is http://wikipedia.org where the
different languages are displayed. I see large hollow boxes with four values
such as x, 0, 5 etc.  As well as solid diamonds with question marks in them.

In the case of a terminal, running sensors displays RPM and temperature
values, when it displays the temperature I see either an empty box or a
filled in character with a question mark in it (for the circle that
represents degrees).

I've run locales and here's the output through my own login:

$ locale
LANG=
LC_CTYPE="POSIX"
LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
LC_TIME="POSIX"
LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
LC_PAPER="POSIX"
LC_NAME="POSIX"
LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
LC_ALL=

Here's what it returns after an su - to root:

# locale
LANG=
LANGUAGE=en_US:en_GB:en
LC_CTYPE="POSIX"
LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
LC_TIME="POSIX"
LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
LC_PAPER="POSIX"
LC_NAME="POSIX"
LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
LC_ALL=

I run:

ii  linux-image-2.6.18-1-amd64        2.6.18-3
ii  locales                           2.3.6.ds1-7

As well as gnome-*

What have I misconfigured?

Thank you!