Can't load X fonts

[glenlee]

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In GNU Emacs 21.3.2 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
 of 2003-06-02 on hope-in-christ.fcwm.org
Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: nil
  locale-coding-system: nil
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Please describe exactly what actions triggered the bug
and the precise symptoms of the bug:

On startup, the buffers don't display any fonts, only square boxes.
In trying to change the fonts in Mule -> Set Font/Fontset, the only
font I can get to work is Fontset -> Standard: 16 dot medium.  I tried
to use:

emacs -font -sony-fixed-*-*-*-*-17-120-100-100-c-*-iso8859-1

when starting emacs, but the boxes came back in the buffers - no
readable text.

Debian Linux stable, XFree86 4.3, using XFS as the font server.
XFree86 I installed from source rather than using a deb package, emacs
I built from source.


Recent input:
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<menu-bar> <options> <mule> <mouse-set-font> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<menu-bar> <help-menu> <eliza> c a n ' t SPC l o a 
d SPC x f o n t s <return> <return> t h e y SPC d o 
n ' t SPC w o r k <return> <return> <escape> <escape> 
<escape> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> <help-echo> 
<help-echo> <menu-bar> <help-menu> <report-emacs-b
ug>

Recent messages:
Making completion list...
Loading view...done
call-interactively: Text is read-only [12 times]
Loading thingatpt...done
read-face-name: Quit
Making completion list...
backward-delete-char-untabify: Beginning of buffer [4 times]
Loading doctor...done
Loading newcomment...done
Loading emacsbug...done