Can't open gnome terminal

[Plamen]

Selecting gnome terminal after search(winkey->type "term"->select Terminal), results in loading terminal for a few seconds and simply disappearing of the loading indication from the title bar.

Nothing else happens. No error and no terminal shown.

This behavior appeared after upgrade to 17.04
I don't have such a problem when opening MATE Terminal.
Also when I run "gnome-terminal" in the mate terminal it outputs this:
"Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: Timeout was reached"

>> lsb_release -rd

Description: Ubuntu 17.04
Release: 17.04

>> apt-cache policy gnome-terminal

gnome-terminal:
  Installed: 3.20.2-1ubuntu8
  Candidate: 3.20.2-1ubuntu8
  Version table:
 *** 3.20.2-1ubuntu8 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.04
Package: gnome-terminal 3.20.2-1ubuntu8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.10.0-21.23-generic 4.10.11
Uname: Linux 4.10.0-21-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.4-0ubuntu4.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Tue May 30 17:15:09 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-06-17 (713 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to zesty on 2017-04-17 (42 days ago)

[Plamen (plamen-shkodrov)]

I managed to start the gnome-terminal via this command: "dbus-launch gnome-terminal"
It outputs this error tho: "WARNING **: Couldn't register with accessibility bus: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken."

I also managed to start it with: "sudo gnome-terminal" without any errors.

Before that I tried "locale-gen" and "sudo localectl set-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8"" as mentioned in similar forum posts but they don't seem to help in this case.

[Chris (qubitcoder)]

I'm also experiencing this issue. I first noticed it when attempting to start gnome-terminal using i3. The keyboard shortcut failed to launch the terminal. I've noticed the same behavior intermittently using Gnome desktop as well.

Sometimes restarting resolves the issue. But after a couple restarts, and uninstalling/re-installing, gnome-terminal still fails to launch (it simply returns the dbus accessibility warning).

Fortunately I could use the impressive alacritty terminal in the meantime.

Here's my system info:

➜ ~ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu Artful Aardvark (development branch)
Release: 17.10

Just let me know if any additional information is needed.

And thanks to Plamen above for the workaround! Using "dbus-launch gnome-terminal" launches gnome-terminal without issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[dino99 (9d9)]

That version is now dead
http://news.softpedia.com/news/ubuntu-17-04-zesty-zapus-has-reached-end-of-life-upgrade-to-ubuntu-17-10-now-519360.shtml

[Asher Wood (zeklandia)]

This affects me on Ubuntu 17.10.

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 17.10
Release: 17.10

[Asher Wood (zeklandia)]

Additionally, I can only launch nautilus from the command line, and many other GNOME apps, such as Photos, also do not open.

[Plamen (plamen-shkodrov)]

Yes,
same goes for totem as well.

Double clicking on video/audio files shows totem loading for a few seconds and closing without error.

When I open totem from MATE Terminal and simply drop the video in its window, works fine.

[Chris S. (r-chris-2)]

I can confirm this with a few apps, including gnome-terminal, nautilus, "book", "documents", "calendar", dconf Editor, "disks", "disk usage analyzer", and "logs", all GNOME apps.

Oddly, certain apps are just fine, like Gedit, System Monitor, and the help menu.

[Chris S. (r-chris-2)]

Running any of the above apps via command / command line with "dbus-launch" in front works.

In my situation, the only thing that's different in my setup is the addition of XRDP for remote desktop, which is set to log in to XFCE instead of GNOME to allow the two sessions to continue side-by-side. This was set in the ~/.xsession file. I changed the file back to GNOME session to test this, but it didn't help.

[dino99 (9d9)]

Users affected:

- which DE is used ?
- is it a rolling installation ?
- can you confirm that issue when loging an other user ?
- try cleaning the system via deborphan and bleachbit (as root, but carefully select options)
- is journalctl show useful warnings/errors ?

After doing the requesting steps, and still having the issue, then report your own bug to send real apport details; that report is outdated and cant help devs to fix the problem as it concern an other more recent release and possibly different config. So that one is useless and so closed.

[Chris S. (r-chris-2)]

dino99:

- which DE is used ? GNOME

- is it a rolling installation ? Yes

- can you confirm that issue when loging an other user ? I had to make a new user to test this. Yes, it does work on the other user...

- try cleaning the system via deborphan and bleachbit (as root, but carefully select options). I've been meaning to do this. Will do.

- is journalctl show useful warnings/errors ? Here are some from GNOME Logs. I don't think they're all from journalctl.

gnome-user-share-webdav.service: Cannot watch bus name org.gnome.user-share.webdav: Connection reset by peer

Failed to start GNOME Terminal Server.

process 3965: arguments to dbus_connection_unref() were incorrect, assertion "connection->generation == _dbus_current_generation" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-connection.c line 2794.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.

Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.TimedOut: Failed to activate service 'org.gnome.Terminal': timed out

[Chris S. (r-chris-2)]

dino99: I ran deborphan and bleachbit. Nothing major there.

The most recent change to this system was the setup of XFCE and XRDP for remote login. If I restart the machine, I can launch the GNOME apps like normal. To replicate the issue, I first have to remote login to XFCE (do something, then log out). Then I physically go to the PC and try to use a GNOME app in the GNOME DE. The XFCE and GNOME sessions use the same username. So it appears the GNOME apps may be getting confused as to which DE to use. But why just the GNOME apps and not everything else?

In order to set up the remote desktop, I modified the .xsession file to be this:

#!/bin/bash
xfce4-session

This allows me to log in as the same user on the local and remote sessions. Perhaps this is a bad practice, but it allows me to use my tower PC (in the basement) on my laptop (upstairs). Perhaps this would all work better if I set up a separate user (e.g., in the original username group to access the same files) for remote access instead of using the same username.

Still, I imagine if I log out of GNOME, log in remotely with XFCE, log out of XFCE, then log in to GNOME, the issue may still persist. I will try that now.

[Chris S. (r-chris-2)]

dino99: I tried what I said, and GNOME apps launch when logging out fully from each session. So the issue only occurs when two DEs have been logged in (even if the XFCE session is logged out), I assume with the same username. So perhaps GNOME apps think they're launching in XFCE, but since XFCE is closed, they don't launch anywhere.

It would appear the workaround for me would be to remote login with a different username.

[Plamen (plamen-shkodrov)]

Awesome observation Chris,
Now that you mention it, I also have other DE installed. But the issue appears without login into any of them beforehand.

I've noticed that sometimes when I login into other DE -> logout -> and login again to gnome the apps works normally. Not sure which one I have a few.