On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 11:57:43PM -0400, randd wrote: > > > > Often the way this is done is to make the the snd-pcm module pull in > > the snd-pcm-oss module in modprobe.conf. This is explained in LFS: > > > > http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/chapter07/udev.html > > That makes sense; I'm not seeing any evidence of anything like that in > either Fedora 7 or Debian etch though and they're both loading snd_pcm_oss > et al. Given that they're both doing doing it I'm thinking something (an > app, probably some piece of GNOME) is causing them to be loaded (eg., > something is using a library that's causing snd_pcm_oss to be demand > loaded)... That would be convenient, if it happened. My money is still on something in the boot process. I know nothing about recent fedora. Last time I looked at debian's boot process the phrases 'byzantine complexity' and 'a maze of scripts, all alike' came to mind. If you are really motivated, please feel free to grep through their scripts looking for snd-pcm.
> >> Strange Character > >> ================= > >> In the help file pages (on an index page, generally between a number and a > >> description: eg., 1. Introduction) - and also inside of firefox - I'm > >> seeing > >> a peculiar character I've never seen before. It's a small square with 4 > >> small characters inside it. It looks something like this (apologies in > >> advance for the ASCII art): > >> > >> + ----- + > >> | 2 0 | > >> | a 1 | > >> + ----- + > > > > You need more fonts. See the Xft section here: > > > > http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/x/x-setup.html#fonts > > > > Installing FreeFont should give you (ugly) characters for nearly > > everything you find. > > Tried it; a scan of /var/log/Xorg.0.log shows no warnings r.e. missing or > corrupted fonts.alias / fonts.dir / fonts.scale - at first, I copied the > fonts over to /usr/lib/X11/fonts/default/TrueType & added that line to > /etc/X11/xorg.conf; Xorg.0.log was complaining about a missing fonts.dir as > I forgot to run mkfontdir. I hadn't noticed this before but fonts.dir et al > were also missing for /usr/lib/X11/fonts/{util,encodings}. First, about the only time you'll get a 'missing font' type of message in Xorg.0.log is if you omit a needed core font. If a glyph cannot be found in any TTF that fontconfig has considered, you get the square with the digits. Second, opinions on where to put the fonts have changed over the years. In my current builds I put the TTFs in /usr/share/fonts/something, e.g. /usr/share/fonts/dejavu/ and /usr/share/fonts/freefont/ - but I _only_ copy the ttfs there - no fonts.dir, no fonts.scale. After installing a font (or after a batch of fonts) I then update the cache: fc-cache -v /usr/share/fonts You might need to tell it where the fonts are. My /usr/lib/X11/fonts only contains core fonts. Check what the version of the book that you are following does for Xft fonts (in x-setup). If the boxes for missing characters still show up even after FreeFont is fully installed, install DejaVu and again run fc-cache. Note that there is no requirement to edit fonts.conf to use DejaVu in preference to Bitstream Vera _if_ you have both installed. And, as I said yesterday, I commend gucharmap to you for seeing which glyphs you can, and cannot, display. > At any rate, I > ran mkfontdir in all 3 dirs (I grabbed the source for ttfontdir per the > instructions in the README file in the tarball; it creates a fonts.dir > that's identical to the one mkfontdir creates). And exited X. When I > started back up again, no difference: still seeing strange little > > + ---- + > | 2 0 | > | 0 2 | > + ---- + > > characters interspersed w other text in help and in a few other places. Now > I'm really curious... > As a data point, the following lines are in my current Xorg.0.log and the fonts all work ok (although sometimes I have to specify a particular page encoding to get pound signs ('£') displayed correctly - only for one or two of the sites I use) : (==) Automatically enabling devices (WW) The directory "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/" does not exist. Entry deleted from font path. (WW) The directory "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/OTF" does not exist. Entry deleted from font path. (WW) The directory "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/" does not exist. Entry deleted from font path. (WW) The directory "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID/" does not exist. Entry deleted from font path. (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/". Entry deleted from font path. (Run 'mkfontdir' on "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"). (==) Including the default font path /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/OTF,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/,/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/. (**) FontPath set to: /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc/, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/OTF, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/, /usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/ (**) RgbPath set to "/usr/lib/X11/rgb" The 75dpi fonts.dir message is because I no longer install those. And the non-existent /usr/lib/X11/fonts/TTF gets added back in as part of the default, but hey, that's X. Rendering of TTFs is separate from this (freetype, fontconfig). > When I opened help in firefox it blew up: > *** glibc detected *** gnome-help: corrupted double-linked list: 0x0815c8a8 > *** > ======= Backtrace: ========= Not good. Did it work before you played about with fonts.dir and fonts.scale ? Is it reproducible ? Does the rest of firefox work ? I assume this is for the 'Help Contents' menu option - dunno if that works or does anything useful at the best of times! Does 'help' work from your other gnome apps (ignoring non-rendered characters) ? Does yelp work ? [...] > Think its got something to do with the fact I'm trying to use UTF-8 (like, > perhaps I need some special patches for certain apps?) > For gnome, UTF-8 is expected. A few _old_ apps may need patches for UTF-8, or more likely fail to work at all with multibyte characters. Check the blfs wiki if in doubt. > >> Firefox > >> ======= > ... > > This is where it gets really wierd. My preferred application for a web > browser keeps (somehow) getting set back to "custom" whenever I run firefox. > Even if it was set to firefox before that... The actual executable for > firefox is in /usr/lib/firefox- ...; there's a symbolic link to it in > /usr/bin. I think that may be confusing GNOME; I'll play with that more > tomorrow too. > The symlink is so that you can run firefox: you need to have the script on your path to just call it as 'firefox'. Structurally, the script is probably a lot better than it used to be in the netscape/mozilla days, but still a rather convoluted way of getting to the program. -- das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/blfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page
