i just upgraded to ubuntu 15.04 but i cant launch the terminal

Question

the question says it all i just cant get into the terminal and I've tried using Ctrl + Alt + T, but it still wont pop up please help !

Answer 1

You can use ALT + F2 and enter gnome-terminal.

Answer 2

I had the same problem. It seems the gnome-terminal-server program is the problem. If I run it:

    $ /usr/lib/gnome-terminal/gnome-terminal-server
    Non UTF-8 locale (ANSI_X3.4-1968) is not supported!
    $ 

So a simple fix is to start gnome-terminal as follows:

    $ LANG=en_US.utf8 /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

You can add the LANG=en_US.utf8 to your ~/.bashrc by adding the following line to it:

    export LANG=en_US.utf8

and logging out and logging back in. (or rebooting) (Note, that if you are not in the USA, substitute your own locale, as long as it ends in utf8)

Now, as to why either gnome-terminal-server requires this or why the proper LANG isn't set, I don't know. Strangely, my Ubuntu box at home has no problem running gnome-terminal, but my work box does. I have compared the two systems and cannot immediately find the difference. (I don't set the LANG variable on the machine that works!)

Oh, and on the system where gnome-terminal doesn't work, I simply started xterm instead... Not perfect, but good enough to get a terminal running to examine things.

Answer 3

I had the same problem as the initial question. Since my initial upgrade failed, I installed 15.04 by first removing the old installation in the initial install process. After installation terminal would not launch. Still it was running several times according to System monitor.

In another discussion someone suggested that if you check System Settings > Language Support the system suggest that internationalisation or language support installation was not finalised. After finalisation (I'm using three languages) the terminal started working.

Answer 4

To fix this problem, you have to

1. Find out your user name. It is NOT your display name. Most likely it won't contain capital letters, nor spaces. If you remember it from somewhere, it is good, jump to 5. If not, do as follows:
2. Press Alt+F2, then enter "gedit" in the window. It will something like "Text Editor" or so, open it.
3. Click Open, then Other Documents, then browse to Computer, and select the file /etc/passwd.
4. Search for the line that has the number 1000 after x, that is, [YOUR_USER_NAME]:x:1000:33:Default User,,,:/home/[YOUR_USER_NAME]:/bin/bash or something similar. Look for the 1000, and that line will start with your user name.
5. Switch to "regular tty" (character console) using Ctrl+Alt+F1. Please remember in time that you can switch back with Ctrl+Alt+F7 anytime.
6. At the login prompt, enter your user name (found above or known), then your password. You will get logged in to a "full screen terminal".
7. Enter sudo -s at the prompt. (You can also use "sudo su", if you read that on the Internet, but it is better knowing what you actually do; -s is the "shell" switch, it is DESIGNED for this function.) Then enter your password - again.
8. At the root prompt # enter dpkg-reconfigure locales. You will have a scary blue window with a grey area, and a lot of locales available under Locales to be generated:. Use the cursor keys to pick en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 and en_US UTF-8, plus anything else you might need (but be sure that locales having your language AND ending in UTF-8, if it is not US English, also be selected). You should use space bar to toggle a locale.
9. When all picked, press TAB to select "Ok", and press ENTER.
10. Now you have the window for selecting the default locale for the system. Pick one from the list, but do not leave it on None, then press ENTER again.
11. Now the system will generate your selected locales and configure the system accordingly.
12. When all this is done, you should reboot your computer to make sure that the environment will be updated. For this, switch back to the graphical terminal with Ctrl+Alt+F7 then reboot as usual, or just enter reboot at the root prompt. In fact, in the last step, restarting the display manager with service lightdm restart should suffice, but if not, you will need to reboot anyway.

Now your terminal should operate as expected.