gnome-terminal fails to launch on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

Solution Verified - Updated 2 Aug 2024

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2
gnome-terminal-3.14.3-3.el7

Issue

gnome-terminal fails to launch after upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2
Below error is reported while attempting to launch gnome-terminal via xterm

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 /usr/lib/gnome-terminal/gnome-terminal-server exited with status 8

Resolution

This issue has been fixed in errata RHBA-2016-1050 with gnome-terminal-3.14.3-3.el7_2.1
Prior to that the issue can be resolved by modifying your locale

Change /etc/locale.conf file to use UTF-8 locale and reboot the system.

Example:

# cat /etc/locale.conf 
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8

Root Cause

Incorrect handling of alternate locale settings by gnome terminal
gnome-terminal prior to gnome-terminal-3.14.3-3.el7_2.1 does not start if locale is set non UTF-8
Content from bugzilla.gnome.org is not included.https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=732127
Inappropriate locale settings in /etc/locale.conf file.

Diagnostic Steps

Capture output of localectl and locale commands run within the affected session.
Run gnome-terminal-server command manually

$ /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal-server 
 Non UTF-8 locale (ISO-8859-1) is not supported!

SBR

Desktop

Product(s)

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Components

gnome-terminal

Category

Troubleshoot

Tags

This solution is part of Red Hat’s fast-track publication program, providing a huge library of solutions that Red Hat engineers have created while supporting our customers. To give you the knowledge you need the instant it becomes available, these articles may be presented in a raw and unedited form.