xfonts-base problem with cursor font xorg wont start

[mlaks <mlaks@verizon.net>]

I mentioned that after a yesterday recent install of etch and 
then apt-get dist-upgrade to  sid 
Xorg wont start.

I get an error message in Xorg.log

Fatal server error:
Could not open default cursor font 'cursor'.

I googled and see that this error should  be related to the xfont-base package.

Why?

In fact for  gentoo the corresponding error message is refered to in their 

http://gentoo-wiki.com/Talk:HOWTO_Modular_Xorg

wiki page as being solved by:

merge font-cursor-misc

In debian this is a function of xfonts-base package.

So I removed --purge and then reinstalled this package.

I get the following error message from install of xfonts-base

warning: /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc does not exist or is not a directory
warning: /etc/X11/fonts/misc does not exist or is not a directory
warning: /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc does not exist or is not a directory


These files exist happily on my other sid machines. They have nice contents

1)
ls /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc
fonts.alias  fonts.cache-1

2)
ls /etc/X11/fonts/misc
xfonts-base.alias


This absence seems to be the source of my problems. What can I do to solve them?

Is this a bug in xfonts-base?

Mitchell