update left me without X

[Ice9]

After my last update my system won't start anymore.
nVidia splash screen comes up and stays for a few seconds, after that I'm dropped at a command prompt.
When I startx I get following messages

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Could not init font path element unix/:7100, removing from list

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed'
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
       after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
 

I googled without finding anything useful, a bunch of stuff related to xfs, as far as I could see xfs wasn't running.
Tried to restart it to no avail.
Checked if it was installed, turns out xfs wasn't even installed.
I installed it and when issuing startx I get 3 weird greenish prompts and a kind of clock on my screen, kdm refuses to start
And on top of that I read something about xfs becoming deprecated????

I'm kinda lost here and coulld use a little help.

[Ice9]

I seem to have narrowed it down to a kdm issue?!
Apparently kdm is running even though I dont's get any graphical interface.
So when I stop kdm and launch xdm I can access my kde session fine - except all my fonts look different now!!

[Void Main]

Actually it looks like your font server isn't running (usually a service called "xfs"). I seem to recall having run into that problem recently on FC5 and fixed the problem relatively quicky, which might be why I can't recall exactly what happened and how I fixed it. First make sure the font server is running.

[Ice9]

xfs isn't running, in fact it was not even installed.
From what I've read, font are handled by defoma (debian font manager) now, and as I said I can use the pc now (OpenGL apps and everything) but only if I use xdm, kdm won't do it and neither will gdm ...

[Void Main]

Well it's most definitely a case of your X server not finding necessary fonts either because they are not installed or xorg.conf is configured to look for them in the wrong place. I can tell that your xorg.conf is trying to use xfs because of the unix/:7100 error. You also need to check that you have the base 75 and 100 dpi fonts installed and if you are not running xfs that the directories they reside in are in your xorg.conf Fonts section.

[Ice9]

This is soo weird because I had a fully operational system a couple of days ago ....
Fonts are installed, positive about that.
This is the font section of my xorg.conf

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Section "Files"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
   FontPath   "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
   # path to defoma fonts
   FontPath   "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"

This is how it looks after I ran defoma-reconfigure yesterday, before that it looked like this

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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/misc"
   FontPath   "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
   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/CID"
   FontPath   "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
   FontPath   "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
EndSection

What I find odd is that I can find these fonts both in /usr/lib/X11/fonts and in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts

Should I add this second path to xorg.conf also?

Edit:
Also this is what I find in /var/log/kdm.log

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Skipping "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a:m_debug_clip.o":  No symbols found
Skipping "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a:m_debug_norm.o":  No symbols found
Skipping "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a:m_debug_xform.o":  No symbols found
Skipping "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/libfb.a:fbmmx.o":  No symbols found
Warning: font renderer for ".pcf" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".pcf.Z" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".pcf.gz" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".snf" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".snf.Z" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".snf.gz" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".bdf" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".bdf.Z" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".bdf.gz" already registered at priority 0
Warning: font renderer for ".pmf" already registered at priority 0
Could not init font path element unix/:7100, removing from list!

Fatal server error:
could not open default font 'fixed';
the X server's font paths might be misconfigured, remote font server(s)
may be unreachable, and/or local fonts may not be installed or are not
configured correctly.

[Void Main]

Notice the difference in paths to your fonts ("/usr/share/fonts/X11/*/*" vs "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/*/*"). Search your hard drive to find where your fonts "actually" reside. Make sure those paths match that.

[Ice9]

Actually the fonts reside in /usr/share/fonts/X11
So the path in xorg.conf matches the physical location of the fonts, what's wrong then?

There is another development, I ran another update and got another updated linux-image among other things.
Now when I reboot, kdm starts but still drops me at a prompt, I then log in and startx and I get my kde session.
So there seem to be a kind of progress

[Ice9]

Apparently I wasn't the only one suffering from this problem as shown in this thread on LQ.

Did another update this morning, rebooted and there was kdm inviting me to login again
So now I have another group of packages to watch out for before I upgrade my box - xorg

[Void Main]

In that thread it looks like people were solving it by changing the font paths in the xorg.conf like what I had suggested. I wonder why it didn't work for you?

In fact now I remember what my problem was and it was sort of related. When I upgraded X on FC5 the fonts were moved from /usr/X11* to /usr/share/fonts/* just like they were for you in Debing, which wasn't a problem because FC5 uses xfs (font server) and it updated the configuration file properly for that. There is an "RgbPath" in addition to the "FontPath" in the xorg.conf and when the upgrade happened the Rgb file path changed from /usr/X11* to /usr/share* just like the fonts. Well on my laptop setup I have 2 copies of xorg.conf, one for being docked at work and one for home. When I boot it automatically copies the correct xorg.conf into /etc/X11 depending on where I am. Well, I had to change the RgbPath in both of my xorg.conf files or X didn't start. That was my problem though because I overwrote a working config with one of my custom non-working configs.

[Ice9]

This post on the debian developper list explains quite well what happened to a lot of debian unstable users out there

As for the xorg.conf file not being updated, I read in my logs something along the lines of "not updating xorg.conf, file has been customized" so actually it was never updated with the new font paths until I ran defoma-reconfigure.

[Void Main]

Interesting. I have actually run into other issues regarding PATH changes. If I recall the flash plugin for Firefox actually was effected by this. I had to sym link all the directories from /etc/X11/* to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/*. I can't remember for sure if it was flash, maybe it was gramps. I know I posted the fix around here somewhere for whatever problem I had. :) I need to get my brain checked because I can't remember squat anymore!