gnome-terminal fails to launch with native GTK ["Failed to connect to Mir: Failed to connect: not accepted by server"]

[Michael Terry]

"Failed to connect to Mir: Failed to connect: not accepted by server"

And then a C++ exception about a broken pipe when sending a message to the Mir server.

That first error message is from GDK's Mir backend when creating the terminal server user daemon. I'm not sure what the root cause is yet.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

Some research... So normally, gnome-terminal seems to start a systemd unit for a server process. Which UAL doesn't associate with the launching process, so doesn't allow a connection to Mir.

We can change how gnome-terminal is started by passing --disable-factory, but that doesn't make much progress either. It starts the server process as a child, but a window still never appears for an undiagnosed reason.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

With the switch to XMir by default, this is fixed.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

That's an accidental workaround (bug 1672931), which will go away in time. Not a permanent fix.