Ubuntu 12.04 Desktop package installed, but can't launch "gnome-terminal", "cannot open display"

18
2014-06
  • user2066671

    I have install ubuntu desktop packages on a 12.04 LTS server. X server comes up fine, GUI works fine without any issues.

    However, when I tried to issue a terminal, I get "Cannot open display", I find this strange since the X Display is running.

    Here is a link to my screenshot I took from VNC viewer

    http://i.imgur.com/7fry2rK.png?1

  • Answers
  • Bell

    You need to define the $DISPLAY variable

    export DISPLAY=:0
    

    This variable helps to find which X server to connect to. You can add it to your ~/.bashrc file and in case you want to set it for all users, add it to the /etc/bashrc file instead.


  • Related Question

    Ubuntu 12.04 server keeps crashing, no idea why
  • dougoftheabaci

    So I have an Ubuntu server I've built myself. However, today it has started crashing pretty regularly but I can't figure out why.

    At first I thought it might correspond to Time Machine backups so I disabled Time Machine completely. Crash still happened. I can say that in each instance I was accessing the server, namely streaming content. I was also downloading torrent files at the time.

    At some point the server would become unresponsive and whatever I was streaming would seize. I would try logging into Webmin but the page would time out. As would any other page being pulled from the server. I would also trying creating an SSH connection but it would say no host connection available.

    Eventually I'd do a hard restart of the server and it would be back to behaving as if nothing had happened.

    However, it has happened multiple times now and I do not know why. I'm afraid, when it comes to Ubuntu, I'm something of a newb. I don't know where to find the error logs and I've been doing some searching. I'd appreciate any director someone can point me in.

    System:
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    Processor: 3.30 Ghz Intel Core i3
    RAM: 8 GB DDR3
    Boot Volume: 40 GB SSD
    Storage: 5 x 2 TB HDD in ZFS zraid1 array

    Since restarting I've checked and all my packages are up to date. I don't believe I'm maxing out my RAM and I'm only using about 40% of my mount volume, less of my storage volumes.


  • Related Answers
  • Bruno Pereira

    I would point out that ZFS is not mature in Linux and that the file system is a system hog when doing a lot of writes and reads. Even the developers warn you of that on their page.

    Had a similar issue using it on 11.10 where the all system would slow down up to a point where opening a Firefox tab while copying a couple of gigabytes of files to the ZFS mounts would be impossible, even while not maxing out the RAM and with plenty of space left on the ZFS mount.

    I would start by getting an external USB disk with EXT4 (or just degrade / remove one of the disks from the ZFS RAID if you are comfortable with it), remove the ZFS mount and test your system operations while using the external USB as storage.