On Sat, 17 Nov 2001, Jim Crumley wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 17, 2001 at 11:43:44AM -0600, Scott Raun wrote:
> > All my system text on my Gnome desktop are little boxes.  I assume
> > this means I have a font problem ;-) - either a font file has gone
> > missing or bad, or the pointer to it is screwed up.
> > 
> > I'm running Debian unstable (Woody?).  I just did an apt-get update /
> > apt-get upgrade - I've actually traded one X problem for another.  For
> > some reason, I wasn't able to log in using the XDM stuff - now I can
> > log in, but I can't read anything!
> 
> Did you try re-starting X?  I ran into a similar problem with
> woody and mozilla about a week ago, but it went away after a
> restart.
>

Or else switch some font lines in your XF86Config-4 file.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2001/debian-user-200109/msg00436.html