Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.setup

> i have just installed free86 3.3.6 because the old one would not support
> my video card.  after doing the install, i ran startx and all was good.
> fr86 found my video card and all went well.  however when i restarted
> linux it went through the start up seq. and stopped on Starting X Font
> Server, and then would not do anything else, no matter what i tried.  i
> do not know how to fix this, so i can start linux in x.
> any help would be greatly app.
> cheers

You don't need to run the X font server to display fonts in X. Since it is giving you problems now, the best thing to do is probably to stop using it and simply hard code the font paths into XF86Config.

You need to stop this service from initiating at boot time. If you are using RedHat or Mandrake, you can safely stop the service from the console by running ntsysv — just uncheck the box for "xfs" and reboot. If you are using some other SysV based distro, just delete the symlinks for xfs in /etc/rc.d/rc3.d and /etc/rc.d/rc5.d and reboot.

Of course, you will need to successfully boot up to login prompt and login as root to do this, and it sounds like you can't get that far. The thing to do is tell lilo that you want to boot into runlevel 1, like this:

lilo: linux 1

(or)

boot: linux 1

Just type "linux 1" after the boot prompt, whatever that might say, and linux will boot into runlevel 1, at which point you can login as root and perform the actions outlined above. (Press <tab> at the lilo prompt to verify that "linux" is the actual name associated with the kernel image you want lilo to look for — it probably is, but in case this fails…).

After you have done this, you will need to edit XF86Config. It typically lives in /etc or /etc/X11. The lines you need to add will depend on your X installation. My 3.3.6 installation, compiled from source, works just fine with only these entries in the "Files" section:

Section "Files"
   RgbPath    "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
   FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/:unscaled"
   FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
   FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
   FontPath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
EndSection

The line you want to delete will likely look like this:

FontPath    "unix/:-1"

At any rate, the fonts live in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts, so check to see what you have. I find that using unscaled fonts improves readability, but use whatever you like best.

Todd