Don't know if this'll help, but FWIW...

Older versions of X-servers used compressed fonts (*Z), the new x-servers 
use gzipped fonts.  Don't know anything about "screen" but maybe it's 
expecting compressed fonts instead of gzipped ones??  Just a guess.  It 
came up recently on my commercial X (for Linux) server.  Got the exact 
same error message.

                          kevin

On Mon, 17 Nov 1997, T. Sean (Theo) Schulze wrote:

> Hey, screen is pretty neat!  I didn't have it, so I grabbed it off the 
> GNU distribution set that came with the "Red Book".  It compiled right 
> out of the box.
> 
> Anyway, when I do startx this is what screen gives me back:
> 
> hussar# startx
> 
> Screen 0 at 0xfd000020, 640 by 480, 8 bpp, rowB 1024, fbbase 0xfd000020.
> failed to set default font path 
> '/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/,/usr/X11R6
> /lib/X11/fonts/Type1/,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/,/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fo
> nts/100dpi/'
> Fatal server error:
> could not open default font 'fixed'
> X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown)
> hussar#
> 
> Where can I set the default font path?  Is that in a settings file, or is 
> that something that should have been compiled in?
> 
> Sean
>