Ubuntu ошибка при запуске терминала

You can’t get the terminal in your Ubuntu machine to open. What can you do? While this issue seldom happens, it is a fact that the problem exists and can happen to you at anytime. Read on to learn what to do when your Ubuntu machine can’t open its terminal.

Also read: How to Fix Can’t Type in Terminal Issue in Linux

Are You Missing the Icon?

If you’re only missing the icon from which you used to run the terminal, that doesn’t mean the actual terminal itself is gone. You can find it among the rest of your installed apps, through Ubuntu’s activities menu.

1. Press the Win and start typing «terminal» in the search field to find it. Click on it to run it.
2. To re-add it to your desktop’s dock, right-click on the icon and select «Add to Favorites.»

Maybe, though, it’s even better to memorize the combination Ctrl + Alt + T on your keyboard. If you try it, you’ll see your terminal popping up.

Also read: How to Copy and Paste Text, Files and Folders in Linux Terminal

Is There a Software Conflict?

If the problem appeared after installing a new piece of software, maybe you’re dealing with a software conflict. It’s rare, but it happens, and there can be millions of reasons, depending on each unique combination of installed software. The easiest solution is to undo our last steps.

Start by uninstalling anything you installed just before the problem reared its ugly head. Hopefully, the problem will be solved.

If the problem persists, you can try more drastic measures, like restoring your whole system from a recent backup. You can then proceed to re-implement those changes one by one until you find the culprit and then undo this problematic step.

It’s worth noting that one of the most common conflicts has to do with the installation of Python. If the problem appeared after upgrading to the latest version of Python, there’s a small chance that it’s because the terminal isn’t configured to use it.

To solve the problem, try updating the reference to Python within the terminal. Move to one of the failsafe TTY terminals by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F3 at the same time. Re-log in there, and then enter:

sudo nano /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

Then, change:

to

Of course, if you’ve installed an even newer version of Python, you’ll need to update the above and tweak accordingly.

If you do not know which version of Python you’re running, you can check by running:

Also read: How to Save the Terminal Output to a File in Linux

Is the Terminal’s Configuration Mangled?

If the problem appeared after trying to tweak something in the terminal’s configuration, and you know what the problem is, you can use the failsafe terminal to try to undo the damage.

To access the TTY failsafe terminal, press Ctrl + Alt + F3 at the same time. Log in and then try to undo the changes you applied to your regular terminal through it.

For more user-friendly tweaking of your terminal’s configuration through GUI, install Dconf-Editor with:

sudo apt install dconf-editor

After it’s installed, run Dconf-Editor and acknowledge the warning that appears by clicking «I’ll be careful.»

Move to «/org/gnome/terminal/legacy» and revert the settings you changed.

If the problem appeared after tweaking your profile’s settings in your terminal, you can easily reset them to the defaults. Move to one of the TTY terminals (use Ctrl + Alt + F3) and enter:

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

Note, though, that this will delete all of gnome-terminal’s profiles and revert the default profile to its original settings.

Also read: How to Send Email From the Linux Terminal

Do Your Locales Need To Be Regenerated?

If any application you installed or reconfigured lately messed with your locales, your terminal might also have issues opening because of that. The terminal depends on locale information to know how to display text in whatever language you use on your system. If this information is unavailable when the terminal asks for it, the program may just exit.

To purge and re-generate your locales:

Once that’s done, try re-opening your terminal emulator.

Also read: How to Use cURL for Command Line Data Transfer and More

Re-Install or Use an Alternative

Although this is closer to how you’d solve the problem if you were using Windows, you can try uninstalling and re-installing your terminal. Move to the failsafe TTY terminal with Ctrl + Alt + F3 and enter:

sudo apt remove gnome-terminal

After, re-install it with:

sudo apt install gnome-terminal

Finally, if nothing worked, you can always use an alternative terminal emulator, such as Guake and Tilix:

sudo apt install guake
sudo apt install tilix

Guake runs kind of like a service, with the terminal only showing up if you press the F12 key. Tilix functions more like a traditional terminal with more personalization features.

You can then use those instead of the default terminal, and you’ll always have the TTY failsafe as a backup.

Also read: 8 Useful and Interesting Bash Prompts

Frequently Asked Questions

Image credit: Guaxipo on Pixabay

Ubuntu not letting its users open the terminal on it is a pretty common issue these days. If you are receiving a similar issue and don’t know what to do next, learn the five fixes on how to fix this “Ubuntu Can’t Open the Terminal” issue on Linux devices. Without any further ado, let’s dive into the reasons causing it and the available solutions for it. 

Fix – Ubuntu freezing in Virtual Machine

This mostly happens when you install some buggy software, or when you modify the terminal’s configuration. Apart from this, a new app or game interacting with the locales and corrupting them may also result in similar issues. 

A few users reported fixing this issue when they search for the terminal in Ubuntu’s activities menu. This suggests how often this problem occurs in Ubuntu and how careful one should be to apply any tweaks to resolve this issue. 

Fix Ubuntu Can’t Open the Terminal 

To solve the “Ubuntu can’t open the terminal” issue, attempt the below fixes one after another. Though you may apply these workarounds in any order, we suggest following these fixes in the same order as they were put in – 

1] Get back the Missing Terminal icon

Ubuntu not letting you open the terminal and the terminal icon missing on it are two different things. If you are not able to launch the terminal just because you can’t find its icon, follow these steps – 

• Press the Windows key and start typing “terminal” in the search field. 
• When a matching result pops up in Ubuntu’s activities menu, click on it.
• Doing so will launch the terminal on the display screen. 

Alternatively, you may also right-click on the terminal icon and select the “Add to Favorites” option. This way, you get a shortcut to start the terminal right on your desktop’s dock. Click on it to start the Ubuntu terminal whenever you want. 

Note: There’s also a hotkey to launch the terminal on Ubuntu. Press and hold Ctrl + Alt + T keys altogether, and you will find the terminal popping up on your display screen. 

How to Install Google Chrome on Ubuntu

2] Uninstall the conflicting software

If you have tried the above solution and still can’t open the terminal, there must lie some conflicting software on your Ubuntu OS. The faulty programs are somehow blocking the terminal from launch. Although it is very rare to install such buggy applications in Ubuntu, however, it can happen. 

If you remember installing some new apps on your Ubuntu and this problem started occurring just afterward, you should uninstall those applications from your operating system. 

Several users reported fixing the terminal not opening issue after they uninstall Python from their devices. In case you have recently installed Python on your computer, it’s most likely to cause the “Can’t open the terminal” issue. This happens only when the terminal is not configured to use, while Python is installed on your Ubuntu device. 

It’s not essential to uninstall Python from your system if there are updates available for your Ubuntu device. Here’s how to upgrade the reference to Python in Ubuntu – 

• Press Ctrl + Alt + F3 to launch the failsafe TTY terminal first. 
• Log in to this and then execute the following code on it – 

sudo nano /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

• Next change #!/usr/bin/python3 to #!/usr/bin/python3.8.

Note: To check which Python version is currently running on your computer, run this code on the same TTY terminal – 

python3 --version

As of now, Python 3.8 is the latest version of Python for the Ubuntu Operating system. However, this can change as time spends by. Well, in that case, you should adequately upgrade Python to its latest available version. 

Try restoring Ubuntu using the recent backup available on it

In case you are still not able to open the terminal on your Ubuntu OS, and you do have a recent backup available on your device, consider using that. 

3] Check and repair the Terminal’s configuration

The “Ubuntu can’t Open the terminal” issue may also arise if you have edited the terminal’s configuration. If that’s the case, you must undo the recent changes made to your terminal. Follow the below instructions on how to proceed with this task – 

• Launch the TTY failsafe terminal by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F3. 
• Log into your account and undo the changes that you have recently made to the terminal’s configuration.

If you want to perform this task through GUI, install Dconf-Editor in Ubuntu by running this code on the failsafe TTY. 

sudo apt install dconf-editor

Wait for the installation to complete and once it is over, acknowledge the warning that says – “I’ll be careful.” Next, go to “/org/gnome/terminal/legacy” and undo all recent changes made to your Ubuntu device.

If this problem persists even after this, you should reset your profile’s settings to their default values. To do this, open the failsafe TTY, and run this code on it – 

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

That’s it, when you execute the above command, the GNOME terminal’s profiles will delete as well. Restart your device and check if you can open the Terminal without getting into some error messages. 

4] Regenerate the Locales

Sometimes when you install a new program, it interacts with the system files and corrupts your locales. As a result of this, you are struggling to launch the terminal in Ubuntu. The locales are very important files in Ubuntu since they decide how to display text in whatever language you use on your system. 

In the absence of this information, the terminal will simply refuse to start or crash, if opened already. To overcome this issue, one must clear the existing locale and generate new ones. Here’s what you must do next –

• Open the failsafe TTY by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F3. 
• Copy/paste the below command on the terminal and press Enter. 

sudo locale-gen --purge

Now that you have purged the existing locale and regenerated new ones, use the shortcut – Ctrl + Alt + T. Check next if the terminal starts this way. 

5] Reinstall the Terminal or Use an alternative

If none of the above solutions help to fix the Terminal not opening issue, you better reinstall the Terminal or switch to an even better command-line program. Here’s how to perform this task –

• Press Ctrl + Alt + F3 to launch the failsafe TTY terminal.
• On it, copy/paste the below command and press Enter – 

sudo apt remove gnome-terminal

• Doing so will remove the default GNOME terminal from your system. To install it back, run this code – 

sudo apt install gnome-terminal

Close the failsafe TTY and press Ctrl + Alt + T. The terminal should launch soon afterward on your Ubuntu device. If not, you better go for an alternate tool like Guake or Tilix. 

Depending on which terminal you like the most, execute any one of the available two commands –

sudo apt install guake

sudo apt install tilix

After you install an external emulator on your Ubuntu PC, use the following shortcuts to open them –

• F12 – Pressing this key will by default launch the Guake terminal. 
• Tilix functions more like a conventional terminal and it offers more personalization features.

Make the lately installed emulator the default terminal on your Ubuntu PC. Do note that you will always have the failsafe TTY running as a backup on your device. 

What is a TTY in Ubuntu?

Teletypewriter (TTY) is a terminal device that lets you run input and output on a character-by-character basis. This basically controls all the communication occurring between the terminal devices and the installed programs. 

Ubuntu’s terminal is developed to mostly perform jobs related to your desktop. However, if you are willing to perform some advanced jobs, you better use TTY applications like GNOME, Alacritty, Guake, or any other advanced emulator. 

To open the default terminal, use the hotkey – Ctrl + Alt + T. Whereas if you want to access the available TTY, use this combination instead – Ctrl + Alt + F3. 

Terminal’s Alternatives in Ubuntu

The terminal is by default the main command-line program in Ubuntu and it handles all basic as well as complex tasks fairly easily. And, as we discussed above, it is quite easy to fix the terminal issues and get it back in no time. 

Still, if you want to use a more advanced tool on Ubuntu, there is a large pool of software available for this. For example, if you want to have a fast terminal emulator, go for Alacritty. This software lets you perform all complex tasks that are not easy to run on Ubuntu’s terminal. 

С линуксом я сталкиваюсь первый раз, знаний 0…
Скачал VirtualBox от Oracle, поставил на него Ubuntu 22.04 с офф сайта. Всё хорошо, кроме того, что не открывается терминал (который ctrl+alt+T). В активности видно, что процесс начинает грузиться, но завершается без результата, при этом в журнале новых строк не появляется.
Это уже 3 диск, который я создаю. В первом терминал открывался нормально с самого начала, но в том диске я выбрал слишком маленький объём, он переполнился во время работы и начала вылезать ошибка, которая даже после расширения не хотела уходить и решения я не смог найти. Второй — терминал не открывался ни в какую, поэтому я попробовал ещё раз пересоздать диск, но терминал всё равно не открывается.

Вроде как нашел решение своей проблемы, но получился замкнутый круг. Мне нужно внести изменения в определенный конфиг, но чтобы это сделать, надо скачать apt gksu, чтобы получить права для редактирования, а для этого мне нужен терминал, потому что через tty3 прав на скачивание нет, а терминал не работает, а консоль на alt+F2 не может использовать gksu, потому что он не скачан…

upd. В общем, решением оказалось то, что 1 раз я устанавливал дистрибутив в ручную с минимальным набором файлов, попробовал сегодня также — всё работает… 2 и 3 разы я устанавливал автоматом при создании виртуального диска, просто прикладывая образ дистрибутива и видимо virtualbox что-то ломает при установке