Can no longer run gnome-terminal

Question

Ubuntu 17.10 (X.Org), GNOME 3.26.2.

I suddenly began having this problem when I try to run gnome-terminal, I can't figure out what caused this:

main19@system19:~$ gnome-terminal

Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: Timeout was reached

This causes gnome-terminal not to start. I have tried looking online, everyone says it is a locale problem, here is my locale output:

main19@system19:~$ locale

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Output of localectl:

System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
VC Keymap: us
X11 Layout: us
X11 Model: pc105+inet
X11 Options: terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

I have run out of ideas, if anyone can provide help with this that would be great.

Answer 1

I ended up refreshing my HOME directory, cleaning out all kinds of old "junk" from it, paying special attention to cleaning out the .config directory. I also created a new user so I could get a fresh copy of the .bashrc and .profile files. This appears to have solved this (and another) problem.

Answer 2

This might be irrelevant for most, but uninstalling chrome-remote-desktop and then restarting the computer worked for me. The package is simple to remove:

sudo apt remove chrome-remote-desktop

This seems to be a known bug.

Simply removing the extension from Chrome was not enough, possibly because I have multiple Chrome profiles with that extension. I had to uninstall it using apt.

The bug report also mentions that simply disabling remote connections in the extension is enough, you don't have to remove the extension entirely.

Answer 3

Quickest fix: open a prompt using Alt-F2 and run the following line:

dconf reset -f /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/

This cleans out all the gnome-terminal profiles. The problem might be caused by old profiles within gnome-terminal, that have unfinished command lines or invalid preferences.

(And try rebooting your system...)

Update: Your problem persists over reboots, yet only in gnome-terminal. I think that means the problem should be somewhere in your configuration files for gnome-terminal. To find out if it's just in your profile: try logging in as root using sudo -i. Try gsettings list-recursively | grep -i term for clues. Are there any clues in you .profile of .bashrc?