[CentOS] Missing /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings/encodings.dir on CentOS 6 ?

James Pearson

james-p at moving-picture.com
Thu Jul 19 16:00:59 UTC 2012


I'm trying to work out if this is a bug or a feature of CentOS 6 ... it 
appears the file /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings/encodings.dir is missing 
on CentOS 6

The file is owned by the RPM xorg-x11-fonts-misc - but is a 'ghost' file 
- that is, it is owned by the RPM but doesn't exist in the RPM

However, nothing (as far as I can tell) re-generates this file on CentOS 6

In CentOS 5, the file is a ghost file owned by the xorg-x11-fonts-base 
RPM - but the RPM %post scripts generates this file (along with 
/usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings/large/encodings.dir file).

There is nothing similar in the %post section of the CentOS 6 
xorg-x11-fonts-misc RPM

I'm not sure if this file is missing by design - or is a bug ...

The reason I ask, is that a user has an application that is looking for 
an X11 font name that does not appear in any font.scale or font.dir 
files on CentOS 6 - but does on CentOS 5 - but the actual (identical) 
font file exists on CentOS 6

The font.scale and font.dir files have fewer entries on CentOS 6 than 
the corresponding CentOS 5 files

Stracing mkfontscale shows that it tries to open 
/usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings/encodings.dir - which isn't there - 
however, if I manually create this file on CentOS 6 - using the command 
'mkfontscale -n -e /usr/share/X11/fonts/encodings' and then re-create 
the font.scale and font.dir files for font directory in question - then 
the 'missing' font name is now listed - and can be used by the application

So, I'm trying to work out if I'm missing something here - or this is a 
bug/feature of CentOS 6 ?

Thanks

James Pearson



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