I have a headless VM (running Ubuntu server 17.04) that I use SSH to access. I'm comfortable with the basics of X11 forwarding, and I can forward xterm and friends just fine. XFCE terminal also forwards OK.
I'd like to be able to use Gnome terminal, but it doesn't seem to launch. Instead, it just hangs for awhile and eventually errors out with:
Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: Timeout was reached
Interestingly, gnome-terminal works remotely over X11 if I have a local desktop session running on my VM (launched via startx).
I'm guessing there's some kind of Gnome service that needs to be running, but I can't figure out what it is or how to start it outside of the context of a full desktop session. I don't usually launch those because the VM is headless by default.
Anybody got some insight on what I could do to get Gnome-terminal working remotely without having to start a GUI desktop session locally on my VM?
Best Answer
That doesn't work because
gnome-terminal
(like any othergnome-thing
) will try to connect to dbus and fail after not receiving a response for a long while.The easiest work-around is just to start a dbus instance for your session:
If you started a Wayland session on the remote machine since you have first run the
export $(dbus-launch)
, you'll have to run it again, or if notgnome-terminal
will start a Wayland instance ofgnome-terminal
on the remote display instead of an X11 one on your forwarded display.Another workaround in this case is to explicitly run an X11
gnome-terminal-server
which will terminate after the last window using it had closed. Example: