Note: This bug is displayed in read-only format because the product is no longer active in Red Hat Bugzilla.
RHEL Engineering is moving the tracking of its product development work on RHEL 6 through RHEL 9 to Red Hat Jira (issues.redhat.com). If you're a Red Hat customer, please continue to file support cases via the Red Hat customer portal. If you're not, please head to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira and file new tickets here. Individual Bugzilla bugs in the statuses "NEW", "ASSIGNED", and "POST" are being migrated throughout September 2023. Bugs of Red Hat partners with an assigned Engineering Partner Manager (EPM) are migrated in late September as per pre-agreed dates. Bugs against components "kernel", "kernel-rt", and "kpatch" are only migrated if still in "NEW" or "ASSIGNED". If you cannot log in to RH Jira, please consult article #7032570. That failing, please send an e-mail to the RH Jira admins at rh-issues@redhat.com to troubleshoot your issue as a user management inquiry. The email creates a ServiceNow ticket with Red Hat. Individual Bugzilla bugs that are migrated will be moved to status "CLOSED", resolution "MIGRATED", and set with "MigratedToJIRA" in "Keywords". The link to the successor Jira issue will be found under "Links", have a little "two-footprint" icon next to it, and direct you to the "RHEL project" in Red Hat Jira (issue links are of type "https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-XXXX", where "X" is a digit). This same link will be available in a blue banner at the top of the page informing you that that bug has been migrated.

Bug 1708989

Summary: Fails to start because of non-UTF-8 locale caused by a failed update
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Reporter: Andrew Haley <aph>
Component: gnome-terminalAssignee: Debarshi Ray <debarshir>
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE QA Contact: Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 8.2Flags: pm-rhel: mirror+
Target Milestone: rc   
Target Release: 8.0   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-06-01 09:05:31 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Andrew Haley 2019-05-12 09:37:59 UTC
Description of problem:

Terminal doesn't work on remote display

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

gnome-terminal-3.28.2-3.el8.x86_64

How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start a GNOME Classic on X11 session
2. Start a VNC server with "vncserver :1"
3. Try to start a terminal with Applications>System Tools>Terminal

Actual results:

A terminal does not appear

Expected results:

A terminal

Additional info:

Comment 1 Andrew Haley 2019-05-12 09:49:23 UTC
> Additional info:

If I install xterm, then try to start gome-terminal:

zarquon:~ $ gnome-terminal 
# Failed to use specified server: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name :1.81 was not provided by any .service files
# Falling back to default server.
# Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process org.gnome.Terminal exited with status 8

Comment 2 Debarshi Ray 2020-03-06 17:51:02 UTC
(In reply to Andrew Haley from comment #1)
> org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling
> StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal:
> GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildExited: Process
> org.gnome.Terminal exited with status 8

The exit code being 8 suggests that you don't have a UTF-8 locale. See:
https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Terminal/FAQ#Exit_status_8

Comment 3 Debarshi Ray 2020-05-27 12:44:07 UTC
The real fix here is to ensure that the GNOME Classic session that you are using does have a UTF-8 locale.

How did you install GNOME? Is it a stock RHEL 8 Workstation installation? Or did you install GNOME by pulling in various packages via DNF?

To find out more about your current locale, as seen by GNOME Terminal, one option is to look at the error message from the GNOME Terminal "server".

(/usr/bin/gnome-terminal isn't the main binary providing the GNOME Terminal application and it's windows. It only sends a request over D-Bus to /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal-server, the "server" to open a new window or tab.)

Try looking for an error of this form in your systemd journal:
  "Non UTF-8 locale (%s) is not supported!"

Or you can try to run your own instance of the GNOME Terminal "server" from an xterm instance, on the assumption that the environment inside xterm isn't different from your session-wide environment. In this case you'll need two xterm windows.

In one of them, do:
  $ /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal-server --app-id foo.bar

In the other, do:
  $ /usr/bin/gnome-terminal --app-id foo.bar

Comment 4 Debarshi Ray 2020-05-27 14:46:41 UTC
How does your /etc/locale.conf look like? See:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/locale.conf.html

You can use something like this to change your system-wide locale:
  $ localectl set-locale en_US.UTF-8

Note that it's possible for your GNOME session to have a different locale than the rest of the system. Those session specific settings are stored in AccountsService, and are configured by the Settings (-> Region & Language or -> Details -> Users) UIs.

Comment 5 Andrew Haley 2020-06-01 09:05:31 UTC
Thank you for the help.

It seems to be that the real problem was a failed update. I did a fresh update of everything, rebooted again, and everything came up cleanly. Sorry for the noise.

Comment 6 Debarshi Ray 2020-06-01 16:06:43 UTC
Thanks a lot for confirming that, Andrew. Much appreciated. :)

Comment 7 Debarshi Ray 2020-09-11 13:33:17 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1699369 ***