Comment # 13 on bug 979566 from Egbert Eich

user@host:~> ls -la /usr/share/fonts/misc/fonts.dir
-rw------- 1 root root 41277 May  2 17:47 /usr/share/fonts/misc/fonts.dir

This permission is wrong. It should be 0644. But this shouldn't be the cause of
this problem.

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 89275 Apr 23 07:31 /usr/share/fonts/misc/9x18.pcf.gz
This is correct. But for some reason the Xserver doesn't seem to be able to
load it. 
* Have you checked the log for any error message?
* What desktop are you using?
* What's the output of 'locale'?