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I have a google cloud instance running Ubuntu 16.04. I am accessing the GUI through VNC viewer Followed this question : How to make VNC Server work with ubuntu-desktop without xfce to set up the gui

When I connect to my server I get the following:

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When I click open in Terminal Terminal does not open. The usual shortcuts for opening terminal also does not work. How can I access the terminal from the gui in such a situation?

PS: I have terminal access on the gcloud side but not on the VNC side

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m0bi5
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1 Answers1

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One possible reason is you have made a mess with the permissions in your user's home directory. It could be caused by using unnecessary sudo command to operate with files located in the user's home, which can change the ownership of some files.

To check whether this is the case, connect to the instance via SSH or open the VPS provider's virtual console - I'm assuming you cannot open any terminal window via GUI - and execute the following command:

find "$HOME" -user root -ls

Normally, there shouldn't have any output. But in case there are some files owned by root then execute the following command to change the ownership back to the user:

sudo find "$HOME" -user root -exec chown $USER:$USER {} \;

Within the above commands, $USER and $HOME are environment variables that contains the user name of the current user and its home directory - so yo do not need explicitly type them.

pa4080
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