After upgrading to CentOS 5.3, emacs is unable to locate its default font.
(I've been able to supply emacs with a command-line or config-file link to a different installed font, but that's a workaround, not a solution.)
I'm not sure if this is a packaging error, an error in our repository configuration, or something else.
I'd appreciate help diagnosing the source of the error.

Below I've inserted some info that seems relevant. I'd be happy to post other information as requested.
I've also attached a probably unnecessary screenshot of emacs displaying little blocks instead of characters at the very bottom of this post.

Here's the command-line error thrown by emacs on startup:

~]$ emacs
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-*" to type FontStruct
Warning: Cannot convert string "-*-helvetica-medium-r-*--*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1" to type FontStruct


orc_orc on #centos suggested removing some of our additional language fonts that were installed by default (we're an educational institution, so we install an enormous range of default language fonts). This does not seem to have helped.

Here's our current list of installed fonts, pared down to match this list as suggested by orc_orc.

~]$ rpm -qa \*fonts\*
xorg-x11-fonts-75dpi-7.1-2.1.el5
urw-fonts-2.3-6.1.1
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi-7.1-2.1.el5
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-100dpi-7.1-2.1.el5
bitstream-vera-fonts-1.10-7
xorg-x11-fonts-truetype-7.1-2.1.el5
dejavu-lgc-fonts-2.10-1
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-15-100dpi-7.1-2.1.el5
bitmap-fonts-0.3-5.1.1
xorg-x11-fonts-base-7.1-2.1.el5
xorg-x11-fonts-Type1-7.1-2.1.el5
liberation-fonts-1.0-1.el5
ghostscript-fonts-5.50-13.1.1
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-15-75dpi-7.1-2.1.el5
xorg-x11-fonts-100dpi-7.1-2.1.el5


Here's our list of installed emacs packages:

~]$ rpm -qa emacs\*
emacs-common-21.4-20.el5
emacs-21.4-20.el5
emacs-leim-21.4-20.el5
emacspeak-23.0-3.el5


Now, it looks like there's one font package required by emacs, but it's installed.

~]$ rpm -qR emacs | grep fonts
xorg-x11-fonts-ISO8859-1-75dpi


This leads me to wonder if some fonts have been moved/removed--but the font package in question wasn't affected by the upgrade on April 01, at least not according to /var/log/yum.log. The following x11 packages were updated, though:

~]$ sudo grep x11 /var/log/yum.log
Apr 01 10:53:34 Updated: xorg-x11-server-Xnest.x86_64 1.1.1-48.52.el5
Apr 01 10:53:39 Updated: xorg-x11-server-Xvfb.x86_64 1.1.1-48.52.el5
Apr 01 10:59:48 Updated: dbus-x11.x86_64 1.1.2-12.el5
Apr 01 11:06:43 Updated: xorg-x11-server-Xorg.x86_64 1.1.1-48.52.el5
Apr 01 11:06:55 Updated: xorg-x11-drv-i810.x86_64 1.6.5-9.21.el5
Apr 01 11:06:57 Updated: xorg-x11-drv-ati.x86_64 6.6.3-3.22.el5
Apr 01 11:06:57 Updated: xorg-x11-drv-nv.x86_64 2.1.12-3.el5
Apr 01 11:06:58 Updated: xorg-x11-drv-mutouch.x86_64 1.1.0-3
Apr 01 11:06:59 Updated: xorg-x11-drv-mga.x86_64 1.4.2-10.el5


and some new foreign-language fonts were also updated:

~]$ sudo grep font /var/log/yum.log
Apr 01 10:51:20 Updated: fonts-bengali.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:23 Updated: fonts-hindi.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:37 Updated: fonts-kannada.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:39 Updated: fonts-malayalam.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:41 Updated: fonts-tamil.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:43 Updated: fonts-oriya.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:46 Updated: fonts-punjabi.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:51 Updated: fonts-telugu.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5
Apr 01 10:51:53 Updated: fonts-gujarati.noarch 2.3.1-1.el5



Finally, here's the superfluous screenshot.


Again, I'd appreciate thoughts on whether there's a missing package, or whether one of emacs's needed fonts has been moved from one package to another in the latest upgrade. Or (most likely) it's something else I haven't thought of. Thanks - Jared

We went through this in IRC for a couple passes. The issue is that there is not a clean font collection, and all sorts of cruft was present. It is no surprise that the display was confused on mappings with the 50 or so fonts you had installed

Please do a clean install, and see if you can reproduce the issue. If so, a bug needs to be filed with the repeoducing path; if not, you have a site specific issue and need to involve a sysadmin controlling your xfs

-- Russ herrold

Hi Russ - The problem was solved by doing a fresh install of 5.3 with the same kickstart file that had all the fonts. Looks like xorg-x11-xfs-utils was updated April 13, which seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks again for your help.

Maybe in the intervening weeks there's now a simpler solution (instead of a reinstall)...?