fatal server error: could not open default font 'fixed'
 

hi i need some help. I can't get my OS to start up. Im running Fedora Core 2. I get to the screen before the graphical login and then it says it can't load graphical x. It asked if i wanted to try to debug what was the problem so i typed y for yes and then a screen came up with this info:


Fatal server error: could not open default font 'fixed'

Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.X.org for help

Please also check the logfile at "/var/log/Xorg.O.log" for additional info.

im going to check the site but figured someone here might now. thanks for any help. I'd appreciate it.... ok i checked the url and it was not helpful whatsoever. Im not sure how to check the logfile either. If i hit exit will it bring me to a commandline prompt?

i can access the filesytem through the commandline but i am not sure what im looking, what i need to edit to fix the problem. And when all of a text document doesn't fit on the screen i don't know how to scroll up through it. Normally i could use the arrows but that just scrolls through the recent commands.

i deleted gaim from the command line and rebooted and X was able to start. Im still curious about this. Maybe gaim did something to the fonts? if anyone has any info on this i'd like to know.

Funny that I had the same problem yesterday!!!!
So I had to reinstall Linux - NOT VERY HAPPY
Anyway I found this link that may interest you - dont know what causes the problem - let me know if you do find the cause.

Regards


http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue93/yuan.html

This is generally caused because the x-windows-system is not installed. The x-win system contains the font server.

Note: In a weird case, my root partition was fully filled by two huge log files occupying more than 2 GB. The font server dies when it cannot write to /tmp. So the simple solution was finding the huge files and deleting them.

that is from the article and last i knew i was out of space, so maybe deleteing gaim freed space and fixed it?

yep, the lack of disk space was solely responsible for your issue. you might consider moving some stuff off the partition that's full and mount it elsewhere...so this doesn't happen to you again...

Good luck...

yeah i got rid of all my movie files to free up some space

Did that work - freeing some space?

Regards
Shelton.

it worked for me