Konsole and the console font

After doing some updates on my Debian Lenny workstation, I noticed that KDE’s Konsole is no longer able to find the “Console” font, and upon trying to install it, I’m greeted with an error saying:

Could not install console8x16.pcf.gz into fonts:/Personal/

Fortunately, this is easily fixable. As root, run the following:

# dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config

Choose the default option to all but the question about bitmap fonts – choose YES here. This will enable support for bitmap fonts. Then do:

# dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

This will update the font cache. Now restart your Konsole, and your fonts should be back to normal.

Update 2009/03/07:   I had this happen to me again today (did a dist-upgrade to Squeeze) and after running the above fix, only one of the two missing fonts returned.   I found that removing the contents of ~/.fontconfig/ does the trick.

Update 2009/07/25:   I got a new PC at work, and this time did a clean install of Squeeze, which meant getting dumped into KDE4.  Again, the font was missing, and the font installer wouldn’t see the pcf file.  I had to do the above, and then, using the font installer, had to type *.pcf  in the filter field – this installed the font.  I also had to set font anti-aliasing to “enabled” instead of “system settings” in the System Settings panel –> Appearance –> Fonts.