Bug 128080

Thank you, I already noticed that as well and will try to fix it as
soon as possible.

As a temporary workaround for you, please run:

    fc-cache -f -v

as root. This will make the problem go away.

But of course fontconfig should not crash just because there is
something wrong with the fonts.cache-2 files.

I'm trying now to find a procedure how to reproduce that bug.  Until
now I only know that it happens "sometimes" and goes away when all
fonts.cache-2 files are forced to be recreated.

Yes, running fc-cache lets me run my X and all apps again. So now that this is
known, I think the Bug is only Major ;) If you need some info to further resolve
the bug, as long as it does not trash my system again... :)

I am very interested in an exact procedure how to make this problem
occur.  It happened already a few times for me, but I don't know how I
triggered this bug. Currently I only know that it goes away by
recreating all fonts.cache-2 files.

Due to a filesystem corruption (never try to move or resize a reiserfs...) I lost parts of the data on my system, but now have recovered by simply installing all packages I had again. I installed the original, slightly older packages that had the error I reported in the first, and I got segfaults. Then I ran fc-cache and everything went fine. Now I simply removed the files, reinstalled the original rpm files again and got segfaults again. Did this 3 or 4 times, everytime it seems to be deterministic. delete the files, install rpm, segfault. maybe its reproducable the same way there.. ?

Each time you install new fonts you need to run "fonts-config -f" again. The fontconfig cache system currently does not work reliable. :-(

I have noticed it too that installing some packages thrash the stuff again. Maybe there are for now two general workaround. Identifying the packages that install new fonts and run the fonts config program, or let it run in some suseconfig scripts that are usually run after install...

Dennis> Identifying the packages that install new fonts and run the fonts
Dennis> config program, or let it run in some suseconfig scripts that are
Dennis> usually run after install

The packages which install new fonts already run the fonts-config program
by calling a SuSEconfig script.

But they don't use the option "-f" (--force). Using that option
forces recreation of all fonts.cache-2 files, which takes a lot of time.
Recreation of all these cache files avoids the bug, but I don't
want to add the "-f" option to the SuSEconfig script because it
make SuSEconfig very slow.

With the previous version of fontconfig (as distributed with SuSE
10.0), there were no such crashes even without uding the "-f" option.
Without the "-f" option, the cache files are only updated in
directories where new fonts have been installed, with the "-f" option
they are updated in all directories.

I still hope that we can find the real cause for the crashes.

By the way, I have updated the fontconfig packages again today, you
can get the new versions from ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/m17n/10.0
in a few hours.

Please test!

I doubt that the problem with the crashes is fixed because I am not
aware of any changes which could be relevant to the crashes.

And I still do not have an easy way to reproduce the problem.

Currently I can reproce the crashes again, but only with Qt applications.

I'll attach a backtrace.

Created attachment 55313 [details]
backtrace

backtrace from the qt application "edittest".

*** Bug 130760 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 130994 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hello, with fontconfig from 10.26. I get now often the following error:

couldn't open fontconfigs chosen font with Xft!!!

strace shows that the program is trying to open the font in current directory, not with an absolute path. Maybe this information helps. Currently lots of apps keep crashing here, though I ran the above mentioned commands. These apps include firefox, kcmshell, kcontrol (intrestingliy not firefox) and konqueror so far. 

Yes, caching system of fontconfig CVS is currently broken. It's not recommended to use it unless you want to debug and fix the problem these issue. Please downgrade to fontconfig of SUSE 10.0.

I updated to fontconfig CVS in STABLE again and can't see any problem. The package contains a patch to give an additional error from fc-cache if something is fishy. So I'd like to have feedback if you can still reproduce this problem - I just can't and some others reporting the problem can't either.

Coolo, we switched back to fontconfig 2.3.2 in STABLE.

STABLE moved back to 2.3.91:

     - update to 2.3.91.20051103 with an extra patch to avoid creating
       invalid cashes (#128080 seems fixed)

Unfortunately, packages are not working for me.  I do not get the exact same problem as before (prior, gdm would not start).  Now, gdm starts and I can login but my desktop never draws.  If I run a fontconfig-linked program from the console to that display, the program silently exits.

So ... 2.3.91 seems still broken!

At least fc-cache segfaults during xorg-modular build for me ...

*** Bug 132603 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 132676 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Well, i can confirm that there is a bug. I recently updated to the latest fontconfig from suse-project via apt and after the next reboot, even the kdm login screen doesn´t appear. I did run fc-cache -f -v but this doesn´t help. kdm login still doesn´t appear. What i could see: there is kdm_greet running consuming nearly all cpu power. strace on kdm_greet shows that´s searching for fonts but can´t find any (probably because all of the filenames displayes by strace are relative filenames ?).

I've just installed SL 10.1 alpha3 and gdm is still not working. See bug #132603 for attached info.

no idea about #21, but all others seem to be another gnome bug