[K12OSN] Sorry - question about squares instead of text again.

[joseph.bishay at utoronto.ca]

Good-day.

My apologies for re-asking this question, but I'm quite lost and I can't
get into irc to ask!

I was using synaptic to update the alsa rpms in an attempt to get sound
working on the clients.  While that didn't work at all (alsa is no longer
listable as a package when I search for it in Synaptic) the major problem
is that now Mozilla and xchat both display boxes and punctuation instead
of letters!  I cannot think of anything else I did that may have caused
that to occur.  The only way I can get the correct letters to display is
if I log in as root.

I have tried to fix it by making sure to select the correct language from
the Language menu at the login screen, but to no avail. 

Has anyone run into this problem before? Or could direct me to do
something to see how I can narrow down the cause for this problem?

Thank you kindly,
Joseph