I didn't see xfs listed as a Component so I was forced to pick XFree86. After upgrading from RHL6.1 to 6.2 and installing the freefont and sharefont packages that are popular among us GIMP users... and then adding a reference to freefont and sharefont to /etc/X11/fs/config... stopped and started xfs and then started X with the end result of the fonts not being available. I also tried another method as documented in the Grokking the GIMP book (http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/node12.html#SECTION00844000000000000000) of using: xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/freefont xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/sharefont xset fp rehash ...but that didn't work either. I checked the ownership and permissions on all files and directories and nothing looked out of ordinary. I also added the font paths to /etc/X11/XF86Config and that didn't help either. Is it me, or is just broken? Help, I need more fonts! Any ideas?
Finally got it working by copying the freefont/fonts.dir and sharefont/fonts.dir from my working RHL 6.1 system into the appropriate dirs on the 6.2 system and restarting xfs. After skimming the man page for xfs and comparing the two fonts directories from 6.1 and 6.2, I guess the process has changed since 6.1 didn't have a /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/encodings directory and 6.2 did. Attempted to run the mkfontdir command to generate the fonts.dir file in each directory but didn't know what I was doing so I did it the lazy way and just copied it from the other system. Somewhere the automatic fonts.dir creation whenever a new font is added is broken. I'm assuming it was working with 6.1 because I didn't have to bother with any of this in the past. Thanks for any consideration on fixing this. It appears to me to be a configuration glitch or a policy change but since I don't know the techincal aspects of all of this, I'm just speculating. I did run Xconfigurator again just in case the format/options in /etc/X11/XF86Config had changed with the upgrade. Like everyone else, I'm awaiting the XFree86 4.0 packages but don't expect them anytime soon given the fact that that XFree86 4 seems to conflict with some shmem changes in the development kernel and a few things are left to be ironed out with it.
xfs startup script has some fixes; will be released with an X errata this week.
What happened to this errata? It sounds like it will solve the X problem I am having on RH6.2 on my Alpha!