Bug#1022942: xterm: cannot load font "-*-terminus-*-*-*-32-*-*-*-*-*-*-*"
Control: severity -1 minor
Hi Thomas,
at first thanks a lot for your patience.
Am Tue, Nov 15, 2022 at 08:10:18PM -0500 schrieb Thomas Dickey:
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2022 at 09:15:43AM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > Hi again,
> >
> > I need to admit that the issue "vanished" on my workhorse laptop which is
> > nice on one hand but having an explanation would be even nicer. ;-)
> > I've now tried the other laptop with the same problem:
> >
> > $ dpkg --get-selections | grep terminus
> > fonts-terminus install
> > $ xlsfonts | grep terminus
>
> That might be one of these possibilities:
>
> a) the X configuration (seen with "xset -q") has something amiss with
> the fontpath (see attached example from my Debian/testing).
There was no attachment but here is mine:
$ xset -q
Keyboard Control:
auto repeat: on key click percent: 0 LED mask: 00000000
XKB indicators:
00: Caps Lock: off 01: Num Lock: off 02: Scroll Lock: off
03: Compose: off 04: Kana: off 05: Sleep: off
06: Suspend: off 07: Mute: off 08: Misc: off
09: Mail: off 10: Charging: off 11: Shift Lock: off
12: Group 2: off 13: Mouse Keys: off
auto repeat delay: 400 repeat rate: 20
auto repeating keys: 00ffffffdffffbbf
fedfffefffedffff
9fffffffffffffff
fff7ffffffffffff
bell percent: 50 bell pitch: 400 bell duration: 100
Pointer Control:
acceleration: 2/1 threshold: 4
Screen Saver:
prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes
timeout: 180 cycle: 600
Colors:
default colormap: 0x20 BlackPixel: 0x0 WhitePixel: 0xffffff
Font Path:
/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
Standby: 0 Suspend: 300 Off: 600
DPMS is Enabled
Monitor is On
> b) updates to the bitmap font-directories have to be finished using
> mkfontdir (part of xfonts-utils). I've seen occasional comments
> where package updates didn't work as intended.
>
> Either way, "dpkg -L xfonts-terminus" tells me that the relevant files
> are in
>
> /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc
>
> If xset reports that's in the font path, I'd try (based on the manpage)
>
> sudo mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc
Done.
> or (by habit, since long ago it ignored the parameter...)
>
> cd /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc
> sudo mkfontdir
>
> and restart X.
After restarting X xterm is starting properly now. It somehow seems
that the mkfontdir call changed the game. Unfortunately we do not
really know what might have caused the issue. As I said I would also
have loved if xterm would not have crashed.
In any case I consider the severity of the bug as lower now and have
set it to minor. I'll leave it to your decision whether you consider
it closed or some helpful resource to find a way to avoid the issue.
Kind regards and thanks again for your help
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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