From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: James Miller Subject: font display problems after chmod Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 15:32:24 -0500 (CDT) Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Return-path: List-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org Ok. It's finally time to confront this problem and attempt to resolve it. I've been sort of limping along with improperly displaying fonts for some time now, but now some pdf documents I really need to view are displaying with invisible text. I need to finally figure out what is causing this font wierdness on this Debian Sid system and try to fix it. First, symptoms: when I use Opera browser, it displays with really wierd fonts (e.g., something meant to look like hand written scrawl). Previously, it displayed with more normal-looking fonts. When I try to view pdf documents, they can appear as largely blank pages, except where, for example, an underline occurs. This refers to the program xpdf. ps2pdf has been failing for me as well, with output like the following: me@mymachine:~$ ps2pdf pentateu.ps pentateu.pdf Error: /invalidfont in findfont Operand stack: F0 Times-Roman Font Times-Roman 272297 Times-Roman --nostringval-- Courier NimbusMonL-Regu (NimbusMonL-Regu) NimbusMonL-Regu (NimbusMonL-Regu) NimbusMonL-Regu Execution stack: %interp_exit .runexec2 --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 2 %stopped_push --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- false 1 %stopped_push 1 3 %oparray_pop 1 3 %oparray_pop 1 3 %oparray_pop 1 3 %oparray_pop .runexec2 --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 2 %stopped_push --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 2 3 %oparray_pop 3 3 %oparray_pop --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- false 1 %stopped_push 6 4 %oparray_pop --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 5 -1 1 --nostringval-- %for_neg_int_continue --nostringval-- --nostringval-- Dictionary stack: --dict:1050/1123(ro)(G)-- --dict:0/20(G)-- --dict:72/200(L)-- --dict:17/17(ro)(G)-- --dict:1050/1123(ro)(G)-- Current allocation mode is local Last OS error: 2 Current file position is 2801 GPL Ghostscript 8.01: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1 When I try to open a pdf file with GV, I get the following: GPL Ghostscript 8.01: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1 Error: /invalidfont in findfont Operand stack: --dict:7/7(L)-- F1 20 --dict:9/9(L)-- --dict:9/9(L)-- TimesNewRomanPSMT --dict:15/15(L)-- Times-Roman Times-Roman Font Times-Roman 397215 Times-Roman --nostringval-- Courier NimbusMonL-Regu (NimbusMonL-Regu) NimbusMonL-Regu (NimbusMonL-Regu) NimbusMonL-Regu Execution stack: %interp_exit .runexec2 --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostringval-- 2 %stopped_push --nostringval-- --nostringval-- --nostrin Here's where I believe the source of the problem lies. Some time ago, I was having trouble getting Mozilla browser and Firefox to run on this machine after apt-get dist-upgrad(ing). Basically, each would segfault. Someone advised me to run the programs through strace to see where the problem lay ("strace mozilla" at the command line). Doing so revealed that the segfault occurred after a certain font could not be loaded. In good newbie fashion, I decided that some fonts I had imported into the system had not had their permissions set corrrectly - i.e., that the mozilla problem was traceable to newbie error. Since I had way too many fonts to examine manually for permissions I decided I should "correct" them en masse by cd'ing to their directory and issuing "chmod 644 * -r", then issuing "chown root * -r" (I may have recounted those commands slightly wrong: I did this some weeks ago and would have to execute the steps all over again to recall precisely). I got these settings by examining fonts at random and determining that most of them were set to 644 and owned by root. Running those commands had an adverse effect at first since the subdirectories' permissions also got changed to 644, but changing them back to 755 largely took care of that. But it was after this, as I recall, that the wierd fonts began to display in Opera and I began to get blank documents when opening pdf's using xpdf. Let me ask: does it seem modifying font permissions and ownership as I've done could be the source of these font display problems? If so, what are the correct font permissions and ownership, and how should I go about modifying them? Input will be much appreciated: this problem must finally be confronted and resolved for this machine to fulfill my needs. Thanks, James PS I've learned a harsh lesson about Mozilla under Sid, it seems. Someone from the Debian users list advised me to avoid these packages, since they are plagued with problems. Another observed that a program should not segfault on font problems. The first-mentioned fellow advised me to use downloads directly from Mozilla and avoid the Debian packages. Much as I want to avoid by-passing the package management system, it seems like it may come to this: I simply must have a useable graphical browser on this system. Seems like my assumption of newbie error was wrong in this case, and that my problems were actually caused by flaky maintainership. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs