[Fontconfig] fontconfig configuration file

[Thomas De Schampheleire]

Hi,

I'm having problems with fontconfig configuration files. I first had 
fontconfig installed in /usr/local but then I decided to reinstall it in 
/usr. Since then I had some serious font problems in X, and after some 
trying I couldn't even get into X (kde). Now I reinstalled X completely 
and can get into it via a workaround ( startx /opt/kde/bin/startkde --:0 )

The errors I'm getting is after loading X:

~/.xsession-errors
01 stderr is not a tty - where are you?
02 xset:  bad font path element (#72), possible causes are:
03     Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
04     Directory missing fonts.dir
05     Incorrect font server address or syntax
06 xset:  bad font path element (#72), possible causes are:
07     Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
08     Directory missing fonts.dir
09     Incorrect font server address or syntax
10 startkde: Starting up...
11 Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
12 Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
13 kbuildsycoca running...
14 Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file

I don't know what line one means, but I don't think that's the problem.
My main problem is the error "Fontconfig error: Cannot load default 
config file" I guess.

I have the following config files:
/home/thomas/.fonts.conf
/etc/fonts/fonts.conf

I also added a symlink to the global file from 
/usr/local/etc/fonts/fonts.conf
but that doesn't seem to help.

Where is fontconfig looking for the configuration? How can I resolve the 
problem?

I found the same error on this list, but am not able to open the reply 
(blank page): 
http://lists.freedesktop.org/pipermail/fontconfig/2003-September/000635.html

Thanks for any help.