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I recently upgraded to 15.10 and jumped through a bunch of hoops to get Clementine running and somewhere along the way I stopped seeing text on quite a few web pages in Firefox.

I thought that a plugin check would help, but ... a page with no text

If I use the element inspector, the text is definitely there. But it isn't showing up on the screen. I can't seem to find a pattern to it, except that it is consistent. I never see headlines on SFist.com or LAist.com but I can read the articles fine. But there doesn't seem to be an obvious pattern to which fonts don't show up.

This started when I got Clementine installed, but I don't have a record of exactly what I installed that day (maybe there is a record I can access somewhere?) and I can't figure out why that would cause fonts to stop appearing in my web browser.

Any tips on troubleshooting this?

Update: I see the same behavior in a clean profile, with no add-ons. I see the same behavior in a fresh user account.

On one page, using the element inspector to disable "sans-serif" at the end of a list like font-family: "Open Sans",X-LocaleSpecific,sans-serif; renders the page readable. Same with Ubuntu,"Bitstream Vera Sans","DejaVu Sans",Tahoma,sans-serif; If I pull sans-serif off the end, I see the page fine (in a serif font).

So it seems like Firefox is unable to find anything to fill that set of requirements -- it has no sans-serif font at all?

Community
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Amanda
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  • The Software Center keeps a log of changed packages and dates. You may get some insights by looking at it. You can find it in the "History" tab in the Software Center application. Also, does this happen in a Guest Account too? Or is it tied to your user?. If it just happen in your user account then it is not a package, but a configuration. – eridani Dec 08 '15 at 17:04
  • I mostly use Synaptic, which doesn't keep logs (or at least, so sayeth the internet.) Updated the Q: not tied to a user. – Amanda Dec 09 '15 at 05:47

1 Answers1

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If you know the name of any of the font packages you typically have installed, you can use the locate command:
locate fontName | less
or
locate fontName | grep -iv java | less
to filter out unwanted results.

If you do not know the font name, you will have to get your system back to a working state and then see if you can identify them. Either way, 'locate' will probably be able to show you where they are and if they move after your Clementine, etc. setups. For example, do you have much inside of /etc/fonts? Or /etc/X11/fonts?

UPDATE: Since the problem seems to be with the default sans-serif, do fc-match sans-serif to find out what your system wants to use and make sure that it is available.

Amanda
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tniles
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  • That's of course assuming it's using system fonts, which is what it sounds like. If you're expecting them to be fetched externally or something like that, you may consider referencing: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1024187 using the inspector and font tab to see font sources. – tniles Dec 08 '15 at 19:58
  • Edited the question and some of your answer, since you got me 99% of the way there. Had to restore fonts-dejavu – Amanda Dec 09 '15 at 05:54