Who b0rked my Ghostscript and fonts?

[Juhapekka Tolvanen <juhtolv@cc.jyu.fi>]

I have Debian Woody with gazillion packages from testing and unstable.

Recently Ghostscript has worked very unreliably. For example ps2pdf
gives this kind of errors:

Error: /invalidfont in findfont
Operand stack:
   Fg   139   --nostringval--   1290   10   --nostringval--   1290   6
--nostringval--   2367   98   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   3
3874.36   Palatino-Bold   Font   Palatino-Bold   601248   Palatino-Bold
--nostringval--   Helvetica-Bold   NimbusSanL-Bold   (NimbusSanL-Bold)
NimbusSanL-Bold   (NimbusSanL-Bold)   NimbusSanL-Bold
Execution stack:
   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
   %--nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--
   %--nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1
   %3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop   1   3   %oparray_pop
   %.runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2
   %%stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   16   4
   %%oparray_pop   17   4   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--
   %--nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
   %--nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   20   5   %oparray_pop
   %--nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   5   -1   1
   %--nostringval--   %for_neg_int_continue   --nostringval--
   %--nostringval--
Dictionary stack:
   --dict:1040/1476(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)--   --dict:71/200(L)--
--dict:101/300(L)--   --dict:17/17(ro)(G)--   --dict:1040/1476(ro)(G)--
Current allocation mode is local
Last OS error: 2
Current file position is 121689
GNU Ghostscript 6.53: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

It seems, that if I use gv to watch PostScript files, that have some of
those standard fonts of PostScript, it does not success. Only
PostScript-files with Computer Modern or other fonts in METAFONT-format
can be watched with gv.

I even downgraded gs, psfontmgr and some other packages to that version,
that comes with stable Debian, and it did not help at all.

 * * *

There is some other weird things going on, too. If I install font
packages like ttf-dustin and ttf-bitstream-vera , I can't see those
fonts with xfontsel. All fontconfig-aware programs, like Mozilla, can
use them, of course. I had to do this to make those fonts available to
non-fontconfig-aware software, like rxvt:

/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 has this kind of font-paths:

Section "Files"
        FontPath        "unix/:7100"                    # local font server
        # if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on
        # these
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"
        FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/freefont"
        FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera"
        FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dustin"
        FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/openoffice"
        FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/thryomanes"
        FontPath        "/usr/local/fonts/TrueType"
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
        FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
#       FontPath        "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
EndSection

Then I did this (under zsh):

cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
for f in ./*(/) ; do ; echo $f ; cd $f ; ttmkfdir -o fonts.scale ; mkfontdir ; chmod ugo+r ./* ; cd .. ; done
chmod -R ugo+rX *

So, who b0rked my Ghostscript and fonts?

P.S: I don't subscribe to list. Cc: to me.

-- 
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * * http colon slash slash iki dot fi slash juhtolv
"Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur,
adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et
dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem."                              Cicero