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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.

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  • Forgive the stupid question, but, if you run gnome-terminal command from a terminal... which terminal is that ? – Robert Riedl Feb 1 '18 at 9:32
  • Robert Riedl, I had to install another terminal program, I installed Sakura. – dln949 Feb 1 '18 at 17:04
  • are you running this gnome-terminal in a su or sudo shell ? – Robert Riedl Feb 1 '18 at 17:15
  • things you can check: is localectl looking good ? or maybe its a dbus issue ? – Robert Riedl Feb 1 '18 at 17:21
  • I am not attempting to use su or sudo or any variations of that. I have edited the original message to show the output of localectl. – dln949 Feb 2 '18 at 0:59
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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.

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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.

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-1

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?

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  • Thanks, but..... nope. I did as you instructed. No discernible change, still the exact same problem. – dln949 Feb 2 '18 at 15:27
  • pm-b, thanks for the suggestions, but.... I'm sorry, I looked at the output of what you suggested, I simply am not able to decipher what it is telling me, so I don't know what is good or bad. Also - I did not understand your last question, what is meant by the ".profile of .bashrc"? How would I find the .profile of .bashrc? – dln949 Feb 3 '18 at 2:37
  • The terminal is a "remote" through which you send commands to your computer. Whenever you start a terminal, it starts a shell (for example BASH). On startup, the shell sources a couple of files in your home folder (e.g. .profile and .bashrc), in which the general options and environment are set. Variables like LC-*, holding locale settings, are usually set in one of these files and sources each time the shell starts. – pm-b Feb 3 '18 at 6:24

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