[SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

voobscout · 2015-01-28 22:11:16

can't find xfs/xfstt or fslsfonts and associated utilities to run/manage a font server.
tried looking everywhere - main repos, aur, googling etc...
the only mention of "font server" is found in wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts
pkgfile returns nothing for xfs,xfstt,fslsfonts

can anybody help me find those?

Last edited by voobscout (2015-02-18 18:56:18)

Trilby · 2015-01-28 23:25:02

Pardon my ignorance, but this is this is the first I've heard of this - admittedly almost all of my competant linux experience has been within arch. But I searched for font-server and I found one wikipedia article that was pretty vague (I was looking for specific file names and or executable names). I then searched for it with debian, figuring if it were common in other distros, a debian search should turn something up. But this only led me to one reference in a debian mailing list that had one response saying one should not try to use a font server but rather just set up fonts properly.

So I have two questions: 1) are you sure a fontserver is the right way to acheive your goals? and 2) can you provide references on setting up a font server on any other distro for comparison so we can help translate the steps into arch?

EDIT: I replaced debian in the above mentioned search with redhat and now found this: http://xpt.sourceforge.net/techdocs/nix … ep/single/ I still haven't found any upstream sources for these tools though. EDIT 2: that page is 8 years old, and all the targets of links in it seem to have vanished. Everything that article seems to suggest that a font server accomplishes is now replaced by other mechanisms. Now I'm finding some more hits on some mailing lists and forums - but nothing from this millenium.

thisoldman · 2015-01-29 01:23:34

Those are old programs, from when X was run from a remote server and everyone was a client.

The xfs and fslsfonts apps are still available from http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/individual/app/. You will have to build and package them for yourself. I could not find xfstt.

For the curious, there is an English language Wikipedia article available: "X Font Server", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Font_Server.

voobscout · 2015-01-29 10:43:43

As far as packages go, debian stable (wheezy) provides https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/xfs and https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/xfstt, so do most of rpm based distros.

As Trilby suggested, maybe it'd be possible to achieve the same with Arch, without using xfs/xfstt, so let me briefly describe what i'm trying to do.

I'm trying to run a persistent (hibernate-able) X session, using xpra with xephyr and xdmx, connecting to lightdm via xdmcp - basically it goes something like this:

$xpra start :100 --start-child="Xephyr :101 -ac +xinerama +bs -screen 800x600 -wr -keybd ephyr,,,xkbmodel=evdev"
$xpra start :200 --start-child="Xephyr :201 -ac +xinerama +bs -screen 800x600 -wr -keybd ephyr,,,xkbmodel=evdev"
$xpra start :300 --start-child="Xephyr :301 -ac +xinerama +bs -screen 800x600 -wr -keybd ephyr,,,xkbmodel=evdev"
$Xdmx :10 -display :101 -display :201 -display :301 +xinerama -input :101 -param XkbRules evdev -ac -query localhost

xpra is used for network transparency, xephyr for compatibility and xdmx to actually create a single desktop, xdmcp is enabled in lightdm.

Everything works, except for "-query localhost" with xdmx. Apparently there's a long standing bug/feature of using lightdm with xdmx, where xdmx is incapable of displaying fonts, if provided by client side, ie. appending "-fontpath /usr/share/fonts/[blah blah]".

On debian i worked around it with "-fontpath tcp/10.0.10.10:7101" and everything was running just the way i wanted to, with xfs[tt] and friends.

Now, after switching to Arch, i discovered that xfs is not provided anywhere. Perhaps there's a different way of achieving the same funtionality i'm looking for. I welcome any suggestions. Meanwhile i'll try packaging xfs[tt] myself.

And thanks for your replies people!

P.S. current xfstt is developed/maintained here - http://www.hadrons.org/software/xfstt/

Last edited by voobscout (2015-01-29 10:51:07)

rebootl · 2015-01-29 10:58:44

Out of curiosity, why are you using multiple xpra sessions + xdmx ? Are you trying to create one desktop over multiple machines ?

Exept for this, a more modern alternative could be something like e.g. x2go: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X2Go

Edit: I'd like the idea but one problem is that AFAIK ~~xdmcp~~xdmx is not maintained anymore, unfortunately...

Last edited by rebootl (2015-01-29 11:01:50)

voobscout · 2015-01-29 12:05:53

@rebootl: Yes, i work with 4 monitors, each of those is attached to different machine on my network.
The setup works just fine with debian, but recently i fell in love/(re-)discovered arch linux for myself and now there's no way i'm gonna go back to debian.

btw: dmx is maintained as part of xorg, however, strangely enough, there isn't much interest in improving it...

voobscout · 2015-02-16 23:45:21

For those who're interested, i've created packages for all the relevant (to me) xfs/xfstt things:

https://github.com/voobscout/aur-fstobdf
https://github.com/voobscout/aur-fslsfonts
https://github.com/voobscout/aur-showfont
https://github.com/voobscout/aur-xfsinfo
https://github.com/voobscout/aur-xfs
https://github.com/voobscout/aur-xfstt-git

Actually decided not to pollute AUR, since there's so little interest in this anyways.

Cheers!

Arch Linux

#1 2015-01-28 22:11:16

[SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

#2 2015-01-28 23:25:02

Re: [SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

#3 2015-01-29 01:23:34

Re: [SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

#4 2015-01-29 10:43:43

Re: [SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

#5 2015-01-29 10:58:44

Re: [SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

#6 2015-01-29 12:05:53

Re: [SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

#7 2015-02-16 23:45:21

Re: [SOLVED] "X font server" - where are you in arch?

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