Re: font display problems after chmod

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

I'm afraid I have nothing targeted to add. But I've rambled a bit, and you 
might find some help in the ramblings.

At 07:13 PM 9/8/2004 -0500, James Miller wrote:
>On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Ray Olszewski wrote:
>
> > First, font settings: I checked my reliable Debian-Sid workstation (that
> > is, the host I do not use for experimentation or development, just for
> > chores). Every font I checked on it -- the ones in various
> > /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/* directories, and the ones in /usr/share/fonts/*
> > directories -- is either mode 644 or mode 444, owned by root, group root.
> > Every subdirectory is mode 755. Since this host is about as stock a
> > Debian-Sid system as you can get, I suggest you rely on its settings as
> > correct. In any case, they match the usual settings for non-executables
> > that all users need access to.
> >
> > You might want to be sure you fixed *all* the fonts, though.
>
>Hello Ray.  Thanks for interjecting.  I spot-checked fonts again and found
>a subdirectory (under /usr/share/fonts/) owned by my user as were all the
>fonts within it.  I changed them all to be owned by root.  It doesn't seem
>to have corrected the problem: firing up xpdf to look at a file still
>results in a blank document - albeit one with the correct number of pages.
>Displaying with an invisible font would be the way to describe it, I
>suppose.  My further spot-check has revealed that all fonts seem to be
>mode 644, owned by root, group root.  All directories/subdirs from
>/usr/share/fonts/ and /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ on down seem to be mode
>755, owned by root, group root.  None of the fonts seem to be mode 444 -
>likely since I changed their mode en masse earlier.  Could that be causing
>this sort of problem?

Since the only difference between 644 and 444 is that the owner of the file 
can write to it, it would be remarkable if that affected the ability of a 
non-owner user to read it. (Sometimes applications will refuse to use files 
that are 664 or 666, for security reasons, but I've never seen one that 
will object to 644.) Anyway, I checked another host here, one I se up frrom 
bare metal just recently, and all fonts on it are mode 644.

But recall that I asked a lot about the gsfonts package. Did you confirm 
that it is installed and properly configured? You can check its files in 
the Debian Package info at www.debian.org . Basically, it includes a bunch 
of files in /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts, plus a hints file in 
/etc/defoma/hints/gsfonts.hintsYou might make sure all are present and have 
reasonable permissions set.

> > Second, your actual problems: Since you are reporting problems with
> > "ps2pdf" and Ghostscript, not just Mozilla and Opera, I don't see what
> > leads you to "flaky maintainership" as the source of the problem. Unless, I
> > suppose, you think the font packages are being maintained poorly. Me, I'd
> > be more inclined to suspect a dependency problem.
>
>Fonts were working fine - nothing unexpected or unusual - prior to running
>Mozilla through strace and determining the segfault to be caused by a font
>permissions problem.  After I tried "correcting" what I thought was my
>newbie error by changing font modes/permissions is where all problems
>cropped up.  From this I deduced that, had the program not segfaulted
>because of a font permissions problem, I would not have been led to
>correct something that was not really even amiss (mozilla-browser /
>mozilla-firefox were amiss - segfaulting where they shouldn't - not my
>fonts).  That's the chain of logic that leads me to suspect flaky
>maintainership as the ultimate source of my current problems.  I'd be
>happy to be proved wrong though - especially if it means being able to
>view pdf's again or getting Opera to use more normal-looking fonts

Can you recall what settings (uid, gid, mode) these fonts had before you 
"corrected" them? And what fonts they were -- the ones in 
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts, the ones in /usr/share/fonts, or both? If they 
were installed by apt-get, how did they get misset in the first place (and 
the difference between what you saw and what I see here tells me they did 
get misset somehow)?

Is it possible that in making the font and directory changes, you 
accidentally changed something else, probably something that needs to be 
755 to 644?

Do other X apps that use fonts seem to be able to access them? I don't know 
what you have isntalled, so I can't be very specific here ... I have in 
mind apps like xmms or xine, that make incidental use of fonts in their 
display and configuration windows. (For example, if you have xmms 
installed, can you change the font used in the playlist display?)

> > I can't find a Debian-Sid package for ps2pdf, so for that one, please check
> > what package the app comes from (with "dpkg -S" followed by the FQN of the
> > app). Is is perhaps part of the xpdf package or one of the xpdf-* packages
> > in its dependencies list ... if so, the xpdf-reader package lists gsfonts
> > as a dependency (see discussion of ghostscript below).
>
>I'm not sure what "FQN" means.

FQN = Fully Qualified Name. For example, /bin/bash instead of just bash. 
But no matter; your approach worked and determined that the app is part of 
package gs-common.

>  But issuing "dpkg -S ps2pdf" results in
>the following output:
>
>me@mymachine:~$ dpkg -S ps2pdf
>gs-common: /usr/share/man/de/man1/ps2pdf.1.gz
>xprt-common:
>/usr/share/Xprint/xserver/C/print/models/PS2PDFspooldir-GS/ps2pdf_spooltodir.sh
>gs-common: /usr/bin/ps2pdfwr
>gs-common: /usr/bin/ps2pdf12
>gs-common: /usr/bin/ps2pdf13
>gs-common: /usr/bin/ps2pdf14
>gs-common: /usr/share/man/man1/ps2pdf13.1.gz
>gs-common: /usr/bin/ps2pdf
>gs-common: /usr/share/man/de/man1/ps2pdf13.1.gz
>gs-common: /usr/share/man/man1/ps2pdfwr.1.gz
>gs-common: /usr/share/man/man1/ps2pdf.1.gz
>gs-common: /usr/share/man/man1/ps2pdf12.1.gz
>gs-common: /usr/share/man/de/man1/ps2pdf12.1.gz
>
>Does that help?

Well, it tells me that the relevant package to check is gs-common. Checking 
its dependencies (with apt-cache show) tells me that they include gsfonts 
and defoma. defoma is the Debian Font Manager. I've never paid any 
attnetion to this app before ... here, it's always done its jobs politely 
and unassumingly ... but you may want to investigate whether whatever you 
did when you tried to repair things by hand somehow caused a problem here. 
All I can do beyond that general observation is read the man page, though, 
and you can do that as well as I.

> > Nor can I find a Debian-Sid package (at least not an *official* one) for
> > Opera, though in this case, I suspect there is not one, since I believe
> > Opera's license is not DFSG compatible. I did find a few unofficial Opera
> > packages, none listing ANY fonts dependencies (but since they are
> > unofficial, I would not trust them as much as official-package dependency
> > lists).
>
>I added Opera's repository to my sources.list.  But, given that Opera was
>displaying normal-looking fonts previous to my attempts to "fix" my
>system's fonts to suit Mozilla's odd behavior, do you think this could be
>an Opera-specific problem?
>
> > Not myself being a user of Mozilla, I can't give you any real advice there.
> > I'm not even *sure* what specific packages you are referring to
> > (mozilla-browser and mozilla-firefox, I'd imagine), or how recently you did
> > an update/upgrade (or dist-upgrade) ... all things that matter in context.
>
>mozilla-browser and mozilla-firefox. apt-get update(d) and apt-get
>dist-upgrade(d) yesterday.  I've been doing that every week or so for the
>last month or two, apart from the last 10 days while I was away on
>vacation.

I should have asked this before: Is apt-get dist-upgrade exiting normally 
or is it reporting problems? I've assumed a normal exit, but I should learn 
not to make excessive assumptions when I can easily ask.

Also, apt-get's installer usually asks if you want to update or retain a 
lot of site-specific stuff. Are you possibly keeping some old config file 
that is introducing a problem? (Since I've no real idea what you have on 
your system, I can't be very specific here.)

> > Closing thought: As I recall, your problems started when you made some
> > changes "by hand" (that is, outside the package manager) to your Debian-Sid
> > system. Bypassing the package manager is always risky, but unless you are
> > an extremely dedicated DebHead, it is occasionally necessary. The lesson
> > here is not to avoid such changes completely, but to make careful, detailed
> > notes when you do them, so you are not left trying to remember what you did
> > so you can undo it.I imagine a similar rule applies to other
> > package-management systems too.
>
>Actually, the problems started when I began doing apt-get dist-upgrade
>rather than discreetly apt-get install(ing) specific programs I wanted
>when there was a new release.  Doing that got me a buggy X display, a
>broken browser (mozilla 1.6 was working fine: 1.7 has never worked
>normally, despite several upgrades)

I don't have it here to check, but in a quick scan of the package contents 
in mozilla-browser, the one that catches my eye is

         /usr/share/doc/mozilla-browser/enabling_truetype.html

I don't know what actual fonts you are using, but it might benefit you to 
see what that instruction set says.

>and a loss of network functionality.
>I keep hoping X will return to normalcy, but it hasn't yet: I get patches
>of black in colored console windows and some jumbling of lines - e.g.,
>with mc.  I can live with that.

Was this a side effect of a kernel upgrade? Or did an xfree86-xserver 
upgrade cause the XF86Config-4 file to be rewritten (had you made changes 
by hand to it that got lost)?

Moreover ... if you are having problems with X, is it possible that xfs 
(the X font server) is also having problems? Is the process even running?

>I've gotten network functionality
>somewhat restored by creating a script that brings up the network
>interface (loads the modules) when I issue it from the CLI.

How had you been doing this before the dist-upgrade? If you did it by way 
of entries in /etc/modules (the simplest way), and the module names did not 
change, I'm very surprised that they are not loading now.

>Both of these
>inconveniences I can live with until determining how/whether to fix them.
>The fonts problem has now taken top priority since, as I mentioned, I have
>pdf's I need to read.  I don't think I have installed any programs without
>using apt.  I do have some unofficial repositories in my sources.list
>though - maybe 3.  Opera and evolution-exchange (or something like that)
>are the only 2 unofficial packages I've installed, so far as I can recall.



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