Problem with starting X server

[Andy Rushton]

Stephen A.Goulet wrote:
>     This is what finally worked for me.  Start cygwin and do a df, if 
> this show the mount points, /usr, /usr/bin/, and /usr/lib.  Then 
> umount /usr and close the cygwin window.  Now do the reinstall of the 
> fonts as documented in the FAQ.
I agree, but wanted to add to this feedback.

I have found that you need to mount the fonts in binary mode. You see, I 
go against the recommended practice and install Cygwin in Text mode - 
i.e. text files have DOS line-endings. I find that this allows better 
inter-operation between Cygwin apps and Windows apps. However, this 
seems to break X11's fonts (I *suspect* that somewhere in X the fonts 
are being opened in text mode when they are binary files but I haven't 
been able to confirm this). If this is your problem, the solution is to 
separately mount the font directory in binary mode - for example, my 
mount table contains the following:

e:\cygwin\usr\X11R6\lib\X11\fonts on /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts type 
system (binmode)
E:\cygwin\bin on /usr/bin type system (textmode)
E:\cygwin\lib on /usr/lib type system (textmode)
E:\cygwin on / type system (textmode)
c: on /cygdrive/c type system (textmode,noumount)
d: on /cygdrive/d type system (textmode,noumount)
e: on /cygdrive/e type system (textmode,noumount)

Note the first entry. Once I have this extra mount point for the X11 
fonts, I reinstalled all the fonts using the Cygwin installer - which 
has a 'reinstall' option for each package. The reinstall means that the 
font indexes get regenerated.

FYI the command for generating extra mount points is called 'mount'.

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