Arch Linux

Salkay

Member

Registered: 2014-05-22

Posts: 623

Unable to start shell:/bin/zsh

Every few days I get the following message in terminator (my terminal emulator) when attempting to open a new window or tab.

Unable to start shell:/bin/zsh

This occurs in continually, in subsequent tabs that I attempt to open. My previously-opened tabs are fine and perfectly operational. Occasionally (~10% of the time) this fixes itself, and I can open new tabs. However, at least once, this reverted itself again and failed 5 seconds later on new tabs.

There is nothing in `sudo journalctl` nor `~/.xsession-errors`.

Whether this fixes itself or not, if I attempt to close one of these "stuck" tabs, X immediately crashes. I have to SysRs+R and E to regain control (but my X session and applications have already crashed).

I've searched through these forums, and there is some mention of fixes, but I do not have /dev/pts in /etc/fstab at all. I'm fairly sure I also had this intermittent problem a few months prior when I used to run bash instead of zsh.

teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 519

Re: Unable to start shell:/bin/zsh

Unable to start shell:/bin/zsh

You have zsh installed? Is it users default shell?

echo $SHELL
cat /etc/passwd
ps -p $$
chsh -l

when I used to run bash instead of zsh.

Did you follow the wiki?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/zsh
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bash

Salkay

Member

Registered: 2014-05-22

Posts: 623

Re: Unable to start shell:/bin/zsh

Yes, I could probably have been clearer, but as per the original post, this is an intermittent problem. zsh (and previously, bash) work in 99% of new shells I open (i.e. it's all set up correctly). This is just a problem that occurs 1% of the time.