Font characters displayed as squares in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

Recently, on my Ubuntu 18.04 I have noticed that at least on gnome-calculator and chromium browser the fonts are displayed as squares. I have followed instructions here and here, the calculator is fixed, but the problem on chromium still exists when I open a dialog to search for a file.

Not sure if this happens on other applications as well, I haven't checked all my apps, but File managers nemo and nautilus are working fine.

Also, before few months ago, I have included some windows fonts for my libre office shown here. I used the copy (cp) method, not the link (ln -s). But, was working fine until yesterday. Haven't done any major change or update, at least on my Linux partition (dual boot). But, I don't think that this has anything to do with that.

Any idea how can I fix this issue?

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Solution 1

I found the solution, was more simple than I thought.

First, you need to update local cache as described here:

rm -rf ~/.cache/fontconfig 
sudo fc-cache -r -v

Then, you need to find fontconfig folder inside snap, since this is the snap version of chromium.

find ~/snap/chromium/ -name 'fontconfig'

Last, remove this folder inside .cache:

rm -rf ~/snap/chromium/common/.cache/fontconfig/

Afterwards, chromium will recreate this folder automatically by using your local updated fontconfig inside ~/.cache/fontconfig.

Restart chromium browser to take this effect.

Solution 2

(The previous answer is the better but just a note for future readers)

Another way the problem described above happens is when ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini becomes corrupted. Make sure to delete any gtk-font-name and/or other incomplete lines from that file. Apparently, if GTK fails to parse it, you get the same problem as the screenshot shown above.

Comments

[vanadium]

Does this answer your question? Only squares instead of letters and numbers are displayed in my calculator and other apps in Ubuntu 18.04

[ioaniatr]

With this answer the calculator is fixed, but not chromium. Not sure if is only chromium or general issue. I haven't found any other app so far except those two. Also, I don't know what caused this.

[unhammer]

Following askubuntu.com/questions/841706/… I tried rm -rf ~/.cache/fontconfig; sudo fc-cache -r -v; chromium and it worked. Chromium gave the message [9572:1:0406/185207.504191:ERROR:child_process_sandbox_suppo‌​rt_impl_linux.cc(79)‌​] FontService unique font name matching request did not receive a response on startup. But then the next time I started it, it was broken again :(

[ioaniatr]

I just installed the regular version of chromium-browser shown here: askubuntu.com/questions/1075103/…. Regular version is working fine, but not the snap version. Firefox, Opera, Chrome are working fine as well. Does this has to do because was the snap version that I had installed? Can I fix the snap version?

[Mitch Talmadge]

Fixed it for me on Firefox with snap. Thank you!

[Roland Ewald]

Also works for Opera.

[Fanta]

Worked with Opera, also had to remove (from my home): snap/opera/common/.cache/fontconfig snap/opera/115/.config/fontconfig snap/opera/114/.config/fontconfig

[John Mansell]

Works for remmina as well. Replace "chromium" with "remmina" for all commands.

[Clain Dsilva]

Fixed it for my Chromium

[Manuzziman]

For Opera on Ubuntu 20.04 I also had to do: sudo rm -rf /var/snap/opera/common/fontconfig

[Manuzziman]

It worked, but now the problem is back. Do not know why.

[jorgeca]

Also worked on Ubuntu 20.04, thanks!