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After upgrading from 17.10 to 18.04 I can't open a terminal by any method.

After reinstalling and updating the problem is still unsolved.

What can I do to fix this?

Zanna
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Govard Moh
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5 Answers5

18

This mostly happens if the language setting on your system got messed up, to fix this simply re-set your language settings (see Screenshot).

enter image description here

After this your terminal should work as expected.

Videonauth
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    The question here: What does make the system to mess or loss the language settings? This is usually happens with me randomly! – SaidbakR Nov 05 '18 at 18:22
10

So I came across the same issue and no language settings seemed to help. Turnout the issue was with my PPA. I had recently upgraded my python3 to 3.7.5 from 3.6. This would have been fine but then I make my default python3 to be 3.7 which made some issues. So the solution to this is: Run this command

 sudo gedit /usr/bin/gnome-terminal

and than change #! /usr/bin/python3 to #! /usr/bin/python3.6 This seems to solve my isuue. Thanks!

Umang Bhatt
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  • Never use sudo in combination with grafical programs. It is pkexec your program or sudo -H your program. It would be better to set python3 version back to the ubuntu one. – nobody Feb 06 '20 at 17:01
  • I knew it was related but could not figure it out! – LordTitiKaka Jun 13 '20 at 08:57
  • Another option appears to be sudo update-alternatives --config python3 and then pick the line for python3.6. It completely blows me away that installing Python3.7 or 3.8 and setting it as the default breaks terminal! And there is ZERO warning against this. To get a terminal, and enter the command, right click desktop and "open terminal" or install xterm. – James Newton Apr 17 '21 at 17:32
6

Open XTerm and run the following code

  1. sudo locale-gen
  2. sudo localectl set-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8"

And then reboot

Thomas
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Shashank Shettar
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5

This fix seemed to work for me. But did not survive a reboot.

When running localectl some entries showed as "n/a" - this seems to be key.

Any command-line activity can be run in xterm (Alt-F2, xterm).

Actual fix (for me):

  1. Make sure /etc/locale.conf has your locale(s) uncommented.
  2. Run locale-gen.
  3. Run localectl set-locale LANG="en_US.UTF-8" (or you LANG value)
  4. Run localectl to see if anything remains set to "n/a"
  5. In my case, run localectl set-keymap "us"
  6. Logout, login - now Terminal works.

(Credits to this thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=180103)

Nigel Brownjohn
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  • He will have problem to run your steps, without terminal, it's impossible to run your commands line after step 2 – damadam Aug 30 '18 at 06:41
  • @damadam I have modified my comment to add that xterm works for these changes - thanks for catching that. That said, if the original steps are followed - terminal will be available until reboot to make my changes. – Nigel Brownjohn Sep 10 '18 at 14:01
  • You can also run these commands from a physical console... press e.g. Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a physical console. Press Alt-F7 (typically) to go back to the graphical console. – jlp Aug 20 '19 at 14:12
4

I was facing the same problem, but accidently resolved it.
So try this one...

Right Click anywhere on the Desktop and select "Open Terminal". It is working for me, at least. Just to let you know, I am still unable to open terminal by clicking on the Terminal icon or through the Keyboard Shortcut.

zx485
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Mayank Malviya
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