X Won't Start

[Guest DudeG]

Ok, so in the two years that I've been using Linux exclusively, this is the first time in which Googling for answers doesn't help my problem.

 

It goes something like this.... I am using Mandrake 10.0, and recently I was installing fonts, not through drakeconf or anything, but through Konqueror. You know how you can click on a font, then it opens a preview inside Konqueror, and in the bottom right corner there's a button that says "Install"? Yeah, that's the method I used to install several new fonts to the System (not Personal). I then used the Login Manager in kcontrol to use those fonts as greeting fonts at the KDE login prompt. Well, everything was going fine, until I restarted my computer. The next time I started up, everything appeared to be going fine. At the point it normally switched from LILO to the KDE login prompt, the screen went blank, as normal, but it remained blank a little too long, then switched back to LILO, showed a few more processes starting up, then sent me to the console login prompt.

 

This isn't the first time this has happened, this happened under the same cirumstances a few months ago as well, but at the time I thought it was for some other reason. Now I'm positive it's because I installed the fonts through Konqueror. How did I solve the problem before? I didn't, I reinstalled. I refuse to reinstall again though, because that solves nothing, and I learn nothing.

 

So now I'll try and summarize everything I've tried and discovered thusfar. Please note, this isn't in any chronological order, it's just as I think of it. First, the end of my Xfree log reports the following:

 

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'

 

Second, trying to manually run X or startx repeats the situation described earlier (sans LILO). Oh yeah, it also displays a long list of things in the terminal, mostly:

 

Warning:    Symbol map for key <xxxx> redefined
             Using last definition for conflicting fields

 

<xxxx> is, in order of the listing on the console: AB02, AB03, AB04, AB05, AB06, AB07, AB08, AB09, AB10, BKSL, LCTL, SPCE.

 

'/etc/init.d/dm status' returns the following:

dm dead but subsys lock

 

I think that's about it.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also, I don't know if you would need the full output from any logs, or more system specs, or whatever. I'll be more than happy to provide whatever information you need (except root password ;) ). I don't think it's a hardware problem though, seeing as how it was working just fine until I installed the fonts. (Well, there were some minor issues, but nothing this severe.)

[Guest DudeG]

Actually, I just googled "X couldn't load default font 'fixed'", and that's helping a bit, I think (I've just scanned one page thusfar).

 

So, based on that information, I'm now trying to (re)locate where the fonts were installed, and then I'm going to run mkfontdir. I think that should help/work. I'll keep reading though. And I'll keep this thread up-to-date on any progress I make. Thanks. :)

 

....*crosses fingers* I hope it works.

[Ixthusdan]

Yes, the method of installing through Konq does indeed bork the system. It seems to me the last time I did this sort of thing i forced an install of the fonts package, which fixed the issue. Yeah, messed up fonts messes up x if you're not careful.

[Guest DudeG]

Ah, thanks for the reply!

 

Quick question though, how would I go about doing that, using the installation discs?

 

(Of all the things I've done, I've never installed RPM's via the command line)

[Ixthusdan]

At the command line, mount your cdrom device. If it is hdb, for example, and the device is cdrom, then:

mount /dev/hdb /mnt/cdrom

 

Then you can navigate the disk. I use Midnight Commander to work on the command line. su to root, and type "mc". You can do a lot from this file manager.

 

Find the font file (I think it is a lib file) and when you see the name of it type:

 urpmi -f name.of.file.rpm

 

-f is the "force" switch.

[Guest DudeG]

First off, urpmi didn't recognize the -f switch, so I read the man page, but it didn't mention any other force switch. So instead I used the command "rpm -i --force", and installed various packages from the CD's, however, X still won't start....

 

I think I'm going to try forcing a remake of the fonts.dir things that xfs uses.

 

I'm getting such a headache from all this though, I think I'm done for the day.