[Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

tick1020 · 2017-04-22 22:19:41

[Edit: for more clearity] After updating with pacman -Syu my terminal fonts changed to a non monospaced font that was barely legible. This now happens on new arch installs also as of Jun 12 2017. To resolve this i just created a .Xresources file listing the font i wanted to use. I follows the instructions on the wiki for X Resouces. Here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/x_resources

After updating restarting and starting X any terminal i open uses a terrible font that's nearly unreadable depending on the terminal i use. setfont and showconsolefont yeilds this

Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console

and these errors show in my openbox-session log (openbox-session > ~/.openbox_startup.log in my .xinitrc)

Obt-Message: Failed to open an Input Method
Openbox-Message: X server does not support locale.
Openbox-Message: Cannot set locale modifiers for the X server.
Obt-Message: Failed to open an Input Method

along with this when i grep /fonts in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[    23.108] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/" does not exist.
[    23.109] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/".
[    23.109] 	(Run 'mkfontdir' on "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/").
[    23.109] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/".
[    23.109] 	(Run 'mkfontdir' on "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/").
	/usr/share/fonts/misc/,
	/usr/share/fonts/TTF/,
	/usr/share/fonts/OTF/

I found somewhere else that someone had a similar issue with those errors and they ran mkfontdir on 100dpi/ and 75dpi/ like it says right in the error... but that doesnt seem to change anything. i dont really understand what mkfontdir is doing but it didnt seem to change anything. And i still get the error; that is from this current session log. Since from the other errors it seems like it could be a locale issue ive checked my .xinitrc, .bashrc and .zshrc, and openbox files to make sure there isnt something in one of them changing my locale and i can't find anything.

$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF.8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF.8"
LC_ALL=

It's worth mentioning that if i su or open a terminal as root i can change my console font without error and if i open another console or don't start X when i log in i can change it and use showconsolefont from my user without problem. I hadnt even changed my console font in this system yet. But i tried making a vconsole.conf file to see if that would overwrite whatever is doing this with no success. I'm really hoping one of you can make me feel silly and this is something stupid. But im going to continue to fiddle myself. If i figure anything else out ill post it below. Any help would be appreciated i CAN'T STAND my terminals looking like this i had to create a new account here cause i lost my old email, just for help with this... It's almost driving me as crazy as windows does...

EDIT: i have now also tried downgrading xorg-server and the virtualbox modules to there previous versions with no success...

Last edited by tick1020 (2017-06-12 22:31:00)

jasonwryan · 2017-04-22 23:06:02

Please paste the output of:

loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID

and details, including conf files, of how you start X.

tick1020 · 2017-04-22 23:38:42

$ loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID
Id=c1
User=1000
Name=aaron
Timestamp=Sat 2017-04-22 18:24:23 EDT
TimestampMonotonic=24458031
VTNr=1
Seat=seat0
TTY=tty1
Remote=no
Service=login
Scope=session-c1.scope
Leader=372
Audit=0
Type=tty
Class=user
Active=yes
State=active
IdleHint=no
IdleSinceHint=1492902410273333
IdleSinceHintMonotonic=2571426459
LockedHint=no

As for you question, i havent added startx to any of my files yet. In fact its commented out in ~.zlogin now. After i finish this i will see if uncommenting it and letting it run changes anything. I had some issues with xorg when i first started this vm and like i said before i havent finished setting it up. I'm trying to fix this issue before i continue... For now it's just this

$ more .zlogin
## Sourced when you start from a login shell 
#if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ -n "$XDG_VTNR" ] && [ "$XDG_VTNR" -eq 1 ]; then
#  exec startx
#fi

I just use startx when i login for now. Here is my .xinitrc i commented out a few things just to see if that was the issue. Right now this isn't doing much at all besides starting openbox and keeping my log... im not sure why i had my LANG variable here before, i just copied this file from my old machine but this was one i had checked already...

$ more .xinitrc 
#! /bin/bash

#/usr/bin/xdg-user-dirs-update

## start openbox
export DE=openbox
openbox-session > ~/.openbox_startup.log 2>&1

## Set user directories
#/usr/bin/xdg-user-dirs-update

## Questionable stuff? i think these were fixes from a bug or bugs on the dell
#export GTK2_RC_FILES="$HOME/.gtkrc-2.0"
#export LANG=en_US.utf8

jasonwryan · 2017-04-23 01:00:52

You typically exec your WM. Otherwise, apart from exporting LANG, that all looks OK. What is the output of `localectl`?

tick1020 · 2017-04-23 02:26:50

Yeah thats what i thought as well... I have no idea whats causing this...

$  localectl
      System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: n/a
      X11 Layout: n/a

seth · 2017-04-23 06:30:08

1. setfont is NOT for X11 VTEs but the dos-a-like non-graphical consoles
2. output of "locale -a"?
3. your weird fonts in X11 terminals (xterm? urxvt?) are likely outcome of some xrdb setting, eg. ~/.Xresources points some non-existing fonts and is invoked by eg. ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh
4. iirc ghostscript adds some really shitty looking fonts which shadow system fonts for helvetica, maybe paste a screenshot of your problem on some image board?

tick1020 · 2017-04-23 07:46:38

 $ locale -a
C
en_US.utf8
POSIX

Working on the screenshot... it's the same font in urxvt, terminator, xterm, xfce term, and konsole... The only one i have that uses its own font (is my guess as to why its different) is Eterm from the aur. But it by far looks the best on urxvt, i believe its because of its setting to control letter spacing. The whole problem is letters overlap each other making some things nearly unintelligible. If it didn't look so terrible and i didnt spend so much time in the terminal i could almost live with just switching to rxvt perminantly and use a large letter spacing to compensate....

Last edited by tick1020 (2017-04-23 08:23:24)

seth · 2017-04-23 11:52:52

Overlap terribly sounds like you're not using a monospaced font.

fc-match monospace
fc-match fixed
xterm -xrm 'xterm.*.*faceName: monospace' # monospace better resolved somethign monospaced ;-)

tick1020 · 2017-04-23 18:22:28

i found this i think it could be related but im still unsure as to why im getting these locale errors and why i still can't use setfont or showconsole font in any X TE. I've never had that problem before. I've used terminal specific settings to change the fonts in the terminals i like to use and that works to stop driving me insane... But i really hate that my log files are still filling up with errors. id like to know whats causing that if anyone has any ideas id appreciate it...

PS thanks Seth that did work for urxvt btw...

Last edited by tick1020 (2017-04-23 18:23:17)

seth · 2017-04-23 20:22:46

showconsolefont will require root permissions and only print the charset, setfont will also require the -C parameter when called from an xterm and will *never* impace the X11 TE itself.
The reddit link points the rename of various (bitmap) fonts, you want to fix the fc resolution of "fixed" and "monospace", eg. via some fontconfig snippet.

The openbox messages are (likely) caused by some setxkbmap call in an init script (~/.xinitrc or ~/.config/openbox/autostarts.sh ?)

tick1020 · 2017-06-12 22:24:53

I just recently solved this issue by simply creating .Xresouces file and changing adding my font to it. I found the answer here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/x_resources Most terminals use the xterm settings if no other settings are given its it's own config.

I don't know how this didn't dawn on me when this was going on i have used urxvt in the past so i was aware of the Xresources file, i just thought that was specifically for xterm based terminal emulators, apparetly it's for pretty much everything that doesnt specify something else once you have started xorg.

It still seems to be a bug in arch, i'm not sure why the standard font wouldn't be a monospace font for terminals? That doesnt make much since to me. I just recently installed arch on a new machine and ran into this issue again. Thats actually why i thought to come back here and update this... But anyway the problem is solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-04-22 22:19:41

[Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#2 2017-04-22 23:06:02

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#3 2017-04-22 23:38:42

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#4 2017-04-23 01:00:52

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#5 2017-04-23 02:26:50

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#6 2017-04-23 06:30:08

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#7 2017-04-23 07:46:38

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#8 2017-04-23 11:52:52

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#9 2017-04-23 18:22:28

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#10 2017-04-23 20:22:46

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

#11 2017-06-12 22:24:53

Re: [Solved] console font / locale / xorg issues? maybe?....

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