I think it happened after running apt upgrade that my gnome-terminal won't open anymore. I've tried a few of the suggestions from other questions which said that re-generating the locales might fix it.
I've installed xterm and after a delay of about 40 seconds this is the output:
# Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: Timeout was reached
This gets printed in the syslog couple of times:
Aug 26 11:26:16 sirius at-spi-bus-launcher[1456]: dbus-daemon[1465]: Activating service name='org.a11y.atspi.Registry' requested by ':1.1005' (uid=1000 pid=9634 comm="/usr/bin/gnome-terminal.real " label="unconfined")
Aug 26 11:26:16 sirius at-spi2-registr[9636]: Could not open X display
Aug 26 11:26:16 sirius at-spi-bus-launcher[1456]: dbus-daemon[1465]: Successfully activated service 'org.a11y.atspi.Registry'
Aug 26 11:26:16 sirius at-spi-bus-launcher[1456]: SpiRegistry daemon is running with well-known name - org.a11y.atspi.Registry
Aug 26 11:26:16 sirius at-spi2-registr[9636]: AT-SPI: Cannot open default display
Since there's an error regarding the default display, I also tried running DISPLAY=:0 gnome-terminal, though with the same result. sudo gnome-terminal does open the terminal correctly. It also worked once when I ran dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd --all (from here) but after a reboot I get the following message:
# Couldn't register with accessibility bus: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
# Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: Timeout was reached
Also tried the first five answers from this question.
Update: Here are the files that didn't belong to my user.
~$ find $HOME -not -user $USER
/home/dominic/.dbus/session-bus/35e9e36cbe34423e8c8274630326355c-0
find: ‘/home/dominic/.gvfs’: Permission denied
/home/dominic/.gvfs
find: ‘/home/dominic/.cache/doc’: Permission denied
/home/dominic/.cache/doc
/home/dominic/.cache/dconf/user
Changed the owner to my user and rebooted. Didn't have a .dconf but a .gconf. Rebooted again, but the terminal still doesn't open.
I also noticed when i run sudo gnome-terminal in xterm and then su dominic in gnome-terminal everything starts working. I can even close all gnome-terminals and open them again. After a reboot everything's back to being broken.
