X error: could not open default font 'fixed'

[paleogryph]

When X tries to load (RH8) receive the following error:
"Fatal Server error:
could not open default font 'fixed' "

I've tried quite a few things and so far nothing has worked.

I changed the FontPath in /etc/X11/XF86Config from
"unix/:7100"
to
"/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
and now get the error:
"Not enough free disk space on /tmp"

Is that all this is, a problem of not enough space? I looked and saw that /tmp is under /, which is (guess what) full at 100%. Apparently I should have given /tmp its own partition.

I have read many posts on the net about this error and nothing I have tried has worked so far.

Any other ideas on this?



>Think for yourself<
...or someone else will do it for you.

 

[danielhozac]

All the times that I have encountered this error, it has been due to the X Font Server not starting correctly. One time, a friend of mine had installed OpenOffice.org which added a few lines to xfs's configuration file. Unfortunately, it made the configuration buggy, and the xfs died all the time.

//Daniel

 

[flugh]

If your / partition is full, things are just going to start breaking. Since the process can't write to /tmp, it can't do things it's got to do to run. X probably dies immediately because the logfile in /var/log can't be written to (assuming you don't have /var on it's own partition).

Way back when, after fumbling a few times with partition sizes, I did a single-partition install (not including swap), cd / && du -sh *. Wrote down the usage of each directory. It's worked for me ever since. I put about 3GB or so for /usr, 800MB for /, 1GB for /var, the rest is /home. Whatever you do, try to keep /home where you never mess with it. That way you can save your critical home files if you install/upgrade. Have a big /var if you use Debian (/var/cache/apt) or rpm-based (/var/lib/rpm I think it is) so you can keep some packages around. Also if you get heavy into web and/or database development (/var/

http://www and

/var/lib/(postgre,my)sql). Plus if your box is internet-accessable, you don't get some idiot portscanning you and filling up your logfiles (/var/log), which would eventually fill up your /. Ah, it goes on and on...

Oh, /tmp on it's own partition means you can mount it with nosuid option (security), could also do the same with /home. Get all the stuff off of / and you can mount / read-only... Bah, I'm starting to confuse myself. I'll shut up!

That's just been my experience over the last few years. Your mileage may vary

--
JR