Arch Linux

penguin

Member

From: Gotham City

Registered: 2010-12-31

Posts: 168

urxvt-terminal not finding fonts?

I've just popped a disk with /home partition (from another arch machine) into a new computer, with new arch install.

It seems rxvt-unicode / urxvt-terminal doesn't want to start on the new install and throws error message:

"urxvt: unable to load base fontset, please specify a valid one using -fn, aborting."

my configuration is the same as on my previous machine, with relevant line from .Xresources:

URxvt.font:             -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--15-140-75-75-c-90-iso8859-1

running: xlsfonts reveals all fonts known by Xorg on the new machine:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--0-0-75-75-c-0-iso8859-1
-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-100-100-100-c-60-iso8859-1
-misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1
6x13
cursor
fixed

Which isn't much, and missing the font urxvt is configured to use. However, even if I select urxvt to use one of the three detected above, it still throws the error message above.

fonts installed should (pretty much) match what I had on my previous arch box:

pacman -Qs font
local/adobe-source-code-pro-fonts 2.042u+1.062i+1.026vf-2
local/cantarell-fonts 1:0.303.1-2
local/fontconfig 2:2.16.0-2
local/freetype2 2.13.3-1
local/gnu-free-fonts 20120503-8
local/gsfonts 20200910-4
local/libfontenc 1.1.8-1
local/libotf 0.9.16-5
local/libxfont2 2.0.7-1
local/libxft 2.3.8-2
local/noto-fonts 1:2025.01.01-1
local/sdl2_ttf 2.24.0-1
local/terminus-font 4.49.1-7
local/ttf-dejavu 2.37+18+g9b5d1b2f-7
local/ttf-liberation 2.1.5-2
local/wordnet-cli 3.1-3
local/xorg-font-util 1.4.1-2 (xorg-fonts xorg)
local/xorg-fonts-alias-misc 1.0.5-1
local/xorg-fonts-encodings 1.1.0-1 (xorg-fonts xorg)
local/xorg-fonts-misc 1.0.4-2
local/xorg-xfontsel 1.1.1-1
local/xorg-xlsfonts 1.0.8-1

I also have this in my ~/.xinitrc

xset +fp /usr/share/fonts/local &  #\
xset +fp ~/.fonts &                # To get fonts in X11-apps
xset fp rehash &                   #/

interestingly, I note the first path /usr/share/fonts/local doesn't seem to exist.

I've also tried updating the cache, by running (but to no avail):

fc-cache

There seems to be some errors in the log:

grep /fonts ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log
27:[    26.312] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/misc".
29:[    26.312]         (Run 'mkfontdir' on "/usr/share/fonts/misc").
30:[    26.312] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/TTF".
32:[    26.312]         (Run 'mkfontdir' on "/usr/share/fonts/TTF").
33:[    26.312] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/OTF".
35:[    26.312]         (Run 'mkfontdir' on "/usr/share/fonts/OTF").
36:[    26.312] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/Type1" does not exist.
38:[    26.312] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi" does not exist.
40:[    26.312] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi" does not exist.

So question: am I missing an installed font? Yet urxvt doesn't want to start with any font I give it.
Happy to hear any thoughts on the matter.