nautilus does not start

[joshiss]

I tried to launch nautilus but it did not start so i tried from alt+f2 and terminal but it did not start I got following message

j0053@j0053-hp-probook-4420s:~$ nautilus
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.10.1-0ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-16.36-generic 3.13.5
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-16-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.13.3-0ubuntu1
Architecture: i386
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Mon Mar 10 14:42:18 2014
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-visible-columns' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified', 'where']"
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-column-order' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified', 'group', 'where', 'mime_type', 'owner', 'permissions']"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-03-24 (715 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Alpha i386 (20120324)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2014-01-30 (39 days ago)

[Jobin Raju George (jobin-rv)]

Can you please do a `sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade` and recheck whether the issue still persists?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for nautilus (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Boyd (boyd-dyob)]

I also get "Could not register the application: Timeout was reached" but if I su to another user Nautilus runs fine.

[Scott Deagan (scott-deagan)]

I'm getting the same problem:

scott@scott-Ubuntu:~$ nautilus
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

scott@scott-Ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep nautilus
scott 2723 0.0 0.6 1379804 53692 ? Sl 09:13 0:09 nautilus -n
scott 7579 0.0 0.0 15948 924 pts/0 S+ 15:39 0:00 grep --color=auto nautilus
scott@scott-Ubuntu:~$

scott@scott-Ubuntu:~$ killall -9 nautilus

scott@scott-Ubuntu:~$ ps aux | grep nautilus
scott 7584 0.0 0.0 15944 924 pts/0 S+ 15:41 0:00 grep --color=auto nautilus

scott@scott-Ubuntu:~$ nautilus
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.
tdb(__NULL__): tdb_open_ex: called with name == NULL

(nautilus then starts within a couple of minutes).

[Scott Deagan (scott-deagan)]

Not sure if this is relevant, but even when Nautilus is working again, I'm getting a bunch of these:

(nautilus:7585): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_container_foreach: assertion 'GTK_IS_CONTAINER (container)' failed

[aexl (aexl)]

it may or may not be the same bg, but the same symptom: nautilus does not start (not after kill, only after reboot)
here it looks like this:

xl@thinker:~$ nautilus
Anwendung konnte nicht registriert werden: Zeitüberschreitung wurde erreicht [app could not be registered, time limit reached]
xl@thinker:~$ nautilus -c
running nautilus_self_check_file_utilities
running nautilus_self_check_file_operations
running nautilus_self_check_directory
running nautilus_self_check_file
running nautilus_self_check_canvas_container
running nautilus_self_check_file_utilities
running nautilus_self_check_file_operations
running nautilus_self_check_directory
running nautilus_self_check_file
running nautilus_self_check_canvas_container
xl@thinker:~$ nautilus -q
Anwendung konnte nicht registriert werden: Zeitüberschreitung wurde erreicht
xl@thinker:~$ killall nautilus
xl@thinker:~$ nautilus
Initializing nautilus-open-terminal extension
Initializing nautilus-image-converter extension

[no forther response]

[Michael Vorburger (mike-vorburger)]

Same here.. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=727622 also similar bug 1366840 and bug 1407552

[atimonin (atimonin)]

I've found a workaround: umount all GVFS remote mounts
gvfs-mount -s sftp && gvfs-mount -s smb && gvfs-mount -s ftp

[Valentas (vk-registrator)]

I got this after some memory-intensive computation (when with a lot of cache operations, the system had been considerably slower for a while).

[dino99 (9d9)]

Glance at broken links into /etc/rc?.d/ folders and delete them, good ones will then been recreated

[George (3grciii)]

I experienced the same problem under Ubuntu 14.04.5 when the system was under heavy computational load for an extended period of time (video encoding) There were no remote GVFS mounts as in atimonin case. I did not experience lagging as Valentis did.

What I tried and the results are as follows:

64bit:~$ killall nautilus
64bit:~$ nautilus -q
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

64bit:~$ killall nautilus
64bit:~$ nautilus
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

64bit:~$ nautilus -c
running nautilus_self_check_file_utilities
running nautilus_self_check_file_operations
running nautilus_self_check_directory
running nautilus_self_check_file
running nautilus_self_check_canvas_container
running nautilus_self_check_file_utilities
running nautilus_self_check_file_operations
running nautilus_self_check_directory
running nautilus_self_check_file
running nautilus_self_check_canvas_container

gvfs-mount shows no remote mounts as seen below.

64bit:~$ gvfs-mount -l
Drive(0): TOSHIBA THNSNH128GBST
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
  Volume(0): 13 GB Volume
    Type: GProxyVolume (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(1): WDC WD2003FZEX-00Z4SA0
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(2): WDC WD3001FAEX-00MJRA0
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(3): Optiarc DVD RW AD-7280S
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)

64bit:~$ nautilus
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

I was able to launch successfully via `gksu nautilus`

[Cerin (chrisspen)]

This happened to me after I loaded a 10GB Mongo database, which took up 50% of my 16GB of memory. Even after I freed up all memory by stopping the Mongo server, Nautilus is now broken.

[wesleyneo (wesleyneo)]

After trying to start Nautilus from Unity and failing, I tried invoking it from the terminal.

$ nautilus .

(nautilus:20662): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_interface_skeleton_unexport: assertion 'interface_->priv->connections != NULL' failed

(nautilus:20662): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_interface_skeleton_unexport: assertion 'interface_->priv->connections != NULL' failed
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

(nautilus:20662): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_icon_theme_get_for_screen: assertion 'GDK_IS_SCREEN (screen)' failed

(nautilus:20662): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(nautilus:20662): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_object: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

[Bootch (di-man)]

Same for Ubuntu 16.04.4 and nautilus 3.14.3:

$ LC_ALL=C nautilus

(nautilus:2903): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_interface_skeleton_unexport: assertion 'interface_->priv->connections != NULL' failed

(nautilus:2903): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_interface_skeleton_unexport: assertion 'interface_->priv->connections != NULL' failed
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

(nautilus:2903): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_icon_theme_get_for_screen: assertion 'GDK_IS_SCREEN (screen)' failed

(nautilus:2903): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(nautilus:2903): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_object: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

$ lsb_release -a
LSB Version: core-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-amd64:core-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-noarch:security-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-amd64:security-9.20160110ubuntu0.2-noarch
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS
Release: 16.04
Codename: xenial

$ nautilus --version
GNOME nautilus 3.14.3

Workaround:
$ killall nautilus

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The new comments look like another issue, please register a new bug. Closing that one since the original issue seems deprecated