Question about fc-cache output

Question

When I run the command sudo fc-cache -rv , there are several directories in which the output line is something like this:

/usr/share/fonts/<directory>: skipping, looped directory detected

What does that mean? And how do I fix it?

Solution

You can safely ignore the output. If you look the whole output. you can see the directory mentioned in the error message exists more than once. When it says "looped", you can take it as a meaning of "duplicated".

/usr/share/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 3 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/ChineseFonts: caching, new cache contents: 73 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/X11: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 3 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/X11/encodings: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 1 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/X11/encodings/large: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc: caching, new cache contents: 89 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/X11/util: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/truetype: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 4 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu: caching, new cache contents: 6 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/liberation: caching, new cache contents: 16 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts: caching, new cache contents: 60 fonts, 0 dirs
/usr/local/share/fonts: caching, new cache contents: 0 fonts, 0 dirs
/root/.local/share/fonts: skipping, no such directory
/root/.fonts: skipping, no such directory
/usr/share/fonts/ChineseFonts: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/X11: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/truetype: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/X11/encodings: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/X11/util: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/custom: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/liberation: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts: skipping, looped directory detected
/usr/share/fonts/X11/encodings/large: skipping, looped directory detected
/var/cache/fontconfig: cleaning cache directory
/root/.cache/fontconfig: not cleaning non-existent cache directory
/root/.fontconfig: not cleaning non-existent cache directory