RE: Problems starting X and a solution to be appended to the FAQ

["Phil Betts" <Phil dot Betts at ascribe dot com>]

Martin Sebastian Wain wrote on Friday, September 14, 2007 4:45 PM::

> I was going crazy with the "fixed" font error... to later find out
> (somewhere) that it was caused by the DOS/Text mode (\r\n) in the
> instalation of cygwin.
> With a textmode mounted root, it seems the fonts fail to load, and the
> diagnostic from X isn't very helpfull.
> 
> I'm a newbie with this, and it was hard enought to figure out. If you
> append it to the FAQ maybe someone else doesn't have to suffer from
> this. 
> 
> -Martín

It's not obvious which FAQ you looked at.  Did you read this in 
the X FAQ?

http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html#q-error-font-eof

If you did, and followed the instructions, then even if your 
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11 is on a text mode mount, setup *should* have 
created a binary mount for the fonts directory.  At least, that's
what it used to do, but I've a suspicion it may have been removed.

If you followed those instructions and that didn't happen, then the 
FAQ should probably have a third reason added to question 8.4,
worded something like this:

| 3. /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts is on a textmode mount.
|
| Run the command:
|
|   mount -M /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
|
| If it is shown as textmode, you should do the following:
|
|   umount /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
| 
| If this reports "no such file or directory", you can safely ignore 
| this - it just means that the directory wasn't mounted.
|
|   rm -rf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
|   mkdir /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
|   mount -b "$(cygpath -m /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts)" /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
|
| If the last command fails with an error message stating 
| insufficient rights, try:
|
|   mount -b -u "$(cygpath -m /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts)" /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
|
| Then re-run setup.exe.
|
| For each of the following packages, if they are marked Keep, then select 
| Reinstall, otherwise leave them as they are:
|   * xorg-x11-f100
|   * xorg-x11-fcyr
|   * xorg-x11-fenc
|   * xorg-x11-fnts
|   * xorg-x11-fscl

In case any of the above lines have been wrapped, lines not starting
with "|" are supposed to be on the end of the preceding line.

I don't know if anyone currently maintains the cygwin-X FAQ, so if it
doesn't appear there, hopefully this reply will be found by searching 
the archives.

Phil

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