LIVE Error: Aborting session with ‘Could not open default font ‘fixed”.


Unlike standard X Connections, LIVE Sessions need fonts installed on both the client and server side in order to function properly.

The reason fonts need to be installed on both systems is that when X-Win32 disconnects, all fonts that it was serving are gone as well.

On certain systems (usually minimal installations or LIVE CD installations) not all fonts are installed on the remote host system, and LIVE may fail with an error in rxserver.log

Error: Aborting session with ‘Could not open default font ‘fixed”.

Fonts are generally located in (among other locations)
/usr/share/fonts
/usr/share/X11/fonts

These fonts and folders need to be readable by the LIVE Server

To fix this install the ‘misc’ font set

For systems with yum installed, run the following command as root:
yum install xorg-x11-fonts-misc

For debian based systems:
apt-get install xfonts-base

The misc rpm font set can also be found here:
http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/3/srodzaj/1/search/xorg-x11-fonts-misc