No text while connecting with nx client to a Linux server

I will post my solution here with all the details, as it took me a while to get it sorted.


I installed NX server on a linux machine.

I used nx client from Linux and from Windows to connect to that Linux machine.


On the first connection to the server, everything would work fine. After disconnecting (not logout), subsecuent connections would display no text on the remote desktop. Some applications like the browser would display the text, but in general the desktop is not usable.


Searching around I saw in some places that the solution was to downgrade libcairo.

I had on the SERVER, libcairo 1.12.


All those places tell you to downgrade libcairo, but not where. On the client or on the server?

Well, while trying to resolve the problem I also used the Tech Preview of NX client called  NX Player, and the problem persisted, so if connecting from a variety of clients the problem occurs across all of them, the problem most probably lies on the SERVER.


So I downgraded the libcairo from 1.12 to 1.10 on the server where nx server is running.


The server is Debian.

From here I found the repository I had to add to sources.list
http://packages.debian.org/squeeze-backports/i386/libcairo2/download


Then you do a
# apt-get update

Then open synaptic, find libcairo2 and select
Synaptic > Package > Force Version

If you got the proper repository, you should have the version 1.10 available and you should be able to downgrade.

After that I rebooted, just to be safe.

Now I have no text / font display issues.