[ale] X Font Server (xfs) problem

[Roger Hammons]

Hello Again,

I'm back with the same old "xfs" problem.

During shutdown as tasks are performed "PASSED" appears
in a column to the right of the task description - EXCEPT
for task "Shutdown X font server" which "FAILED".  This just
started after I wiped out everything in /tmp with rsync a
couple of weeks ago.

(I have X working pretty well - only one apparent problem
remains - and I really think it's related to xfs.)

I've discovered from looking at the boot.log and messages
files that the problem happens during startup: xfs starts up
but dies immediately - so it's not running during my session
or at shutdown.

I've confirmed with "ps -ef | grep xfs" that it's not running
after startup.  (Can anyone confirm it's running on their 
system?)

Here are typical entries from /var/log/messages:

 9/27  13:21:40  xfs: xfs startup succeeded
 9/27  13:21:40  xfs: Fatal font server error:
 9/27  13:21:40  xfs: Cannot establish any listening sockets

The man entry for xfs describes an option 
  "-ls listen-socket   specifies a file descriptor which is
   already set up to be used as the listen socket.  This
   option is only intended to be used by the font server
   itself when automatically spawning another copy of 
   itself to handle additional connections."

The xfs startup command in init.d has no options - and hasn't
forever - so possibly there was "a file descriptor ...
already set up" before I trashed /tmp.  Maybe IN /tmp?  (Which
is NOT cleared out between sessions on my system.)  If so,
how did it get there?  What was it's name?  Contents?

I realize this is long and boring, but I would be VERY grateful
if anyone can shed more light on this for me.

Roger Hammons
muddled in midtown