I recently decided to try out linux and installed Arch Linux 0.7 on my Toshiba laptop. Afterwords, I download a few apps but when I tried to run them, but they wouldn't run. So I went aterm and typed in
"/opt/mozilla/bin/firefox"
and this is what popped up
"""
(firefox-bin:5537): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_property_get(): length value has wrapped in calculation (did you pass G_MAXLONG?)

(firefox-bin:5537): GdkPixBuf-WARNING **: Cannot open pixbuf loader module file '/etc/gtk-2.0/gdk-pixbuf.loaders': No such file or directory

(same thing repeats 4 times)

(firefox-bin:5537): Pango-WARNING **: No builtin or dynamically loaded modules were found. Pango will not work correctly. This probably means there was an error in the creation of:
'/etc/pango/pango.modules'
You may be able to recreate this file by running pango-querymodules.

(firefox-bin:5537): Glib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object) failed

(firefox-bin:5537): Pango-CRITICAL **: _pango_engine_shape_shape: assertion 'PANGO_IS_FONT (font)' failed

Pango-ERROR **: file shape.c: line 75 (pango_shape): assertion failed: (glyphs->nrm_glyphs > 0)
aborting...
/opt/mozilla/lib/firefox-1.0.4/run-mozilla.sh: line 159: 5537 Aborted
"$prog" ${1+"$@"}
"""
Pretty much the same thing pops up whenever I try to run anything that uses Gdk and/or pango from the command prompt (gaim, abiword, etc) give or take a few more error messages (gaim dosn't have the Gdk errors). All the other programs that don't use Gtk and Pango (fluxbox, mutt, mc, etc.) work just fine.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Did you install the glib2, gtk and pango packages via pacman or did you compile them yourself? If you installed them with pacman, what mirror did you use? What versions do you have installed (pacman -Qi pango)? Does /etc/pango/pango.modules actually exist? That file isn't installed by any package so perhaps try running a GTK app as root which would give pango the permissions to write that file.

I installed everything on my machine from pacman so far from ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/current/os/i686. I have Pango v. 1.8.1-1, glib2 2.6.5-1, and gtk 1.2.10-4 installed. However, /etc/pango/pango.modules does not exist. I tried running several GTK apps as root and all of them simply printed back the same messages they did when I was just a regular user. I tried doing "pango-querymodules" but all that did was spit back a bunch of text without solving anything. Any idea how I could make a pango.modules file either automatically or manually?

While I am aware that this is certainly not the solution since at some point in time, the file should have been created of it's own accord, following is a link to mine. Try putting it in place and 0666 permissions so everyone can read it and see what results you have.

http://www.myfilebin.com/userfiles/cam/pango.modules

I copied your pango.modules into my directory and firefox (as well as every other one of my problamatic apps) actually worked (I'm actually posting this from my laptop). However, all of the non pango error messages still popped up when I ran it from aterm ((firefox-bin:5537): Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_property_get(): length value has wrapped in calculation (did you pass G_MAXLONG?) etc.). Thanks for your help. Also if its not too much trouble, would you happen to have any theories as to why my pango.modules wouldn't generate automatically and why the other error messages still popped up? Once again, thanks for all the help. I really appreciate it.

No idea, but I saw your post over at the Archlinux forums so hopefully you'll get a better answer over there

Hi there,

This error was bothering me too. Fortunately it is easy to fix. Open gfx/src/gtk/nsScreenGtk.cpp and look for this call:
Change G_MAXLONG to G_MAXLONG - 3 and recompile. I found the fix from Loic Minier here, and (its already fixed in Debian).

Hope this helps.

Looks like your system is missing some files that gtk needs. They are normally included in the gtk packages or created during installation, but you can also create them yourself.

Try this: