Ubuntu – Terminal and Nautilus stopped working after a crash

gnome-terminalnautilus

Something went terribly wrong and, after a C++ program I was working on crashed, my terminal and nautilus (files) stopped working.

I managed to install Terminator (another shell emulator), here is what I am getting when trying to start Terminal from Terminator:

(gnome-shell:779): Clutter-CRITICAL **: 01:49:35.532: Unable to
initialize Clutter: Unable to initialize the Clutter backend: no
available drivers found. (gnome-shell:779): mutter-WARNING **:
01:49:35.532: Unable to initialize Clutter.

Here is what I get when launching Nautilus (btw somehow I can launch it from Terminator but not by clicking the icon)

** (nautilus:445): WARNING **: 01:48:33.021: AT-SPI: Could not obtain desktop path or name
** (nautilus:445): WARNING **: 01:48:33.026: AT-SPI: Could not obtain desktop path or name
** (nautilus:445): WARNING **: 01:48:33.031: AT-SPI: Could not obtain desktop path or name

….. another 10-15 repetitions of that error ….

** (nautilus:445): WARNING **: 01:48:33.509: AT-SPI: Could not obtain desktop path or name
** (nautilus:445): WARNING **: 01:48:33.509: AT-SPI: Could not obtain desktop path or name

Any pointers on how I can get things back to normal?

EDIT: It does persist after reboot.

Best Answer

I started experiencing the same problems as you describe today, seemingly out of nowhere. I found my solution in this thread: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=279168

(For posterity) First install Terminator or Xterm to get a working terminal. Open Synaptic Package Manager and install it there.

Check the permissions on the files in your home folder

find $HOME ! -user $USER

In particular be on the lookout for files in .dbus

You may resolve all permissions at once with

sudo chown -Rc $USER:$USER $HOME

Additionally, I removed the files in $HOME/.dbus/session-bus, removed Chrome Remote Desktop and its data in $HOME/.config/chrome-remote-desktop and rebooted. My assumption is that Chrome Remote Desktop restarted itself during an update and wrote some files as root in the home folder.

Related Question