Arch Linux

tchell

Member

Registered: 2015-12-09

Posts: 3

Gnome-terminal fails to start from command-line: exit status 10

I do not run gnome desktop environment, but I like to run nethack in gnome-terminal, because fonts are configurable on an instance-by-instance basis, permitting my giant font preferences for nethack not to contaminate my other terminals.

Recently, when I attempt to start gnome-terminal from my working xfce4-terminal, I get the error

$ gnome-terminal
Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.gnome.Terminal exited with status 10

This has foiled my casual nethack playing almost entirely.

In contrast to other posts[1,2,3,4], the exit status at the end of that very long line is 10, ie, gtk_init() failed[5].  Looking at more detailed messages from journalctl -f, we see:

Dec 09 14:39:48 foo org.gnome.Terminal[418]: Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
Dec 09 14:39:48 foo org.gnome.Terminal[418]: Failed to parse arguments: Cannot open display:
Dec 09 14:39:48 foo dbus-daemon[418]: Activated service 'org.gnome.Terminal' failed: Process org.gnome.Terminal exited with status 10

The locale is UTF-8, vte3 is installed normally, et c.

$ localectl
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: n/a
      X11 Layout: n/a
# pacman -Ss vte3
extra/vte3 0.42.1-1 [installed]

It seems that dbus is passing gnome the wrong display or no display.  I have only a dim sense of how gnome works or how dbus, gnome-terminal and gnome-terminal-server interact, so I don't know where to start looking about how to fix it.  The gnome metapackage is installed in entirity, and other somewhat gnomish applications like nm-applet and gnome-calculator are working. Gnome-terminal has worked on this system in the past, as recently as last October.  Do I need some kind of gnome session running that I don't know about?  Does dbus need to be informed about my x session and display variables somehow?

Any ideas would be appreciated.  Thanks!

1. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=180103
2. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1403166
3. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=180081
4. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=180073
5. https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Terminal/FAQ#Exit_status_10

Last edited by tchell (2015-12-09 20:00:59)

Phasme

Member

Registered: 2011-07-10

Posts: 21

Website

Re: Gnome-terminal fails to start from command-line: exit status 10

Have you tried to set the DISPLAY variable before the command you know? :

DISPLAY=:0 gnome-terminal

This won't solve the real problem, but we will be sure if it is related to this variable or not.

Last edited by Phasme (2015-12-11 15:36:04)

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tchell

Member

Registered: 2015-12-09

Posts: 3

Re: Gnome-terminal fails to start from command-line: exit status 10

Thanks Phasme.  The result is the same:

~ $ echo $DISPLAY
:0.0
~ $ DISPLAY=:0 gnome-terminal
Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.gnome.Terminal exited with status 10

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: Gnome-terminal fails to start from command-line: exit status 10

Try "dbus-launch gnome-terminal".

In Gnome, gnome-terminal starts a "gnome-terminal-server" that has the "systemd --user" process as its parent. It's like it's not actually started by the desktop. There's probably some dbus messaging shenanigans going on there. Perhaps searching for that "gnome-terminal-server" thingy helps finding answers.

Are you sure the other terminal programs really aren't good enough? They should have command line options to set fonts that override the normal config.

tchell

Member

Registered: 2015-12-09

Posts: 3

Re: Gnome-terminal fails to start from command-line: exit status 10

Try "dbus-launch gnome-terminal".

This launches gnome-terminal successfully with no errors and no log messages.  Thanks for the fix!  I'll look into what dbus-launch does and how gnome-terminal-server works to see if I can find a root cause.

Are you sure the other terminal programs really aren't good enough? They should have command line options to set fonts that override the normal config.

Surely there are other good terminal programs, but I have already invested my all-important nethack configuration in gnome-terminal and I feel like gnome-terminal "should" continue to work.

Thanks for your attention my problem!