Red Hat Training

A Red Hat training course is available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux

6.3. Working with legacy fonts

The X server looks for a font server specified in the FontPath directive within the Files section of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf configuration file.
The X server connects to the xfs server on a specified port to acquire font information. For this reason, the xfs service must be running for X to start.

6.3.1. Adding Fonts to xfs

To add fonts to the core X font subsystem (xfs), follow these steps:
  1. If it does not already exist, create a directory called /usr/share/fonts/local/ using the following command as root: 
    mkdir /usr/share/fonts/local/
    If creating the /usr/share/fonts/local/ directory is necessary, it must be added to the xfs path using the following command as root: 
    chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/local/
  2. Copy the new font file into the /usr/share/fonts/local/ directory
  3. Update the font information by issuing the following command as root: 
    ttmkfdir -d /usr/share/fonts/local/ -o /usr/share/fonts/local/fonts.scale
  4. Reload the xfs font server configuration file by issuing the following command as root: 
    service xfs reload