Terminal not working on Ubuntu 18.04

[Luís de Sousa]

On Ubuntu 18.04 the terminal stops functioning after a few hours of work. In a fresh session the terminal works as expected, but after some time it becomes slow and finally unresponsive. After that, every time a new terminal window is launched it is greyed out and must be forcibly terminated. No keyboard input is ever shown in the terminal window. Things go back to normal if the DE session is restarted.

Thank you.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-terminal 3.28.2-1ubuntu1~18.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-32.35-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-32-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity:Unity7:ubuntu
Date: Wed Aug 22 11:04:37 2018
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-11-15 (279 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170801)
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-08-17 (5 days ago)

[Luís de Sousa (luis-de-sousa)]

Hello again, some updates on this issue.

I have been trying to upload a report with apport when a terminal window is greyed out. However, apport is also unresponsive when this happens, I use the Alt+F2 command prompt, it takes about 20 seconds to display the keyboard input (about one character per second) and never reacts to the Enter input.

A more important point: I noticed that a process named "orca" was using 100% CPU when the terminal becomes unresponsive. I managed to end the process in the System Monitor, and immediately the terminal started functioning correctly again. Since the command prompt is also not functional during these events, I am unable to upload a report on orca.

Thank you.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Luís de Sousa (luis-de-sousa)]

Hi there,

for those seeking for a solution to this: removing the orca package permanently solves this issue:

sudo apt purge orca

This has no visible impact on the functioning of the system, just a slight increase of the overall fluidity of the DE.

Best.