Problem starting KDE, RH9, Kernel 2.6.5, XFree86 4.4.0
 

Hello, I have a problem. I recently re-built X from source. It even works too. Unfortunately I can't say the same for KDE (my choice when it comes to window managers). I'm running RedHat9, i686, kernel 2.6.5, XFree86 4.4.0 Every time startkde gets executed my machine, a Sony PCG-GRZ630 laptop, throws this errror:

xset: bad font path element (#64), possible causes are:
Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
Directory missing fonts.dir
Incorrect font server address or syntax
xset: bad font path element (#64), possible causes are:
Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
Directory missing fonts.dir
Incorrect font server address or syntax

I originally though it was a misconfiguration in xfs but it appears to be more then that. I'm pretty sure my xfs is running propperly and I can get lower level window managers, like Twm, to work but I can't get KDE or even Gnome to start. I've been bashing my head against this for awhile and I want my GUI back! So if any one has some input on my problem I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks, Tek~

it could be a problem with fontconfig and freetype that X installs when you compile it without modifying the config file. The fontconfig and freetype versions are usually older than what is already on the system. I got around it by removing a few things after compiling and installing X. Concretely, try removing the files
libfreetype*
and
libfont*
in /usr/X11R6/lib. Stop xfs and then restart it again.

When I install X, I install it in a place other than /usr/X11R6. You can do it by creating a a directory like /usr/X11R6-4.4 and then creating a symlink /usr/X11R6 to /usr/X11R6-4.4 (you have to do this before make install). This way, X will get installed into /usr/X11R6-4.4. You can have multiple versions of X installed and you can switch between them by changing the symlink. Comes in handy if you are trying to install a new version without having to remove the old one.