debian template - apps not launching

[Greg Strong]

Hello,

I installed the Debian community template and am having some issues.  Some apps won't come up, including Terminal with the built-in start menu link.  The cursor bounces and an item appears on the task bar for about 30 seconds before it gives up.  Not sure what could be going wrong.  I've applied updates to the template.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Greg

[cprise]

> --

Hi,

I'm having the same/similar issue with the debian 8 template.

One thing you should try is to go run 'qvm-sync-appmenus debian-8-x64'
in dom0, then go into the VM settings / Applications tab for the
template and add an item to the right column. That will cause the menus
to be re-generated according to the software that is present in the
template.

Also, if you have any regular VMs that were switched from fedora to
debian you will want to update the settings/Applications tab for them as
well.

After I did that, I can now run most programs. But Files/nautilus still
gives me a problem...
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qubes-users/ki-m5el9yUQ/X99qrODEX4cJ

Another thing you can try is right-clicking on the (running) templatevm
in Manager and 'Run command in vm', then enter 'gnome-terminal' to see
if that has an effect.

[Greg Strong]

Thank you for the help, I really appreciate it.  Unfortunately, it didn't help.  Running 'gnome-terminal' from 'Run command in vm' doesn't even do anything.   That works if I type 'firefox' but not 'gnome-terminal'.  Sadly, I don't know nearly enough about Linux or Qubes to begin to troubleshoot.  It would be interesting to know if the process was starting, but without a terminal I'm not sure how I would determine that (or how that knowledge would help me.)

Thanks,
Greg

[Jason M]

There seems to have been an update (in my case anyway) that updated locales which seems to have broken some apps like gnome-terminal.  gnome-terminal requires a proper locale to be set or it will not start.

use xterm to gain access to a terminal.  You may attempt to run gnome-terminal from xterm and if you receive some locale type message, then try to update locale to see if this solves your issue.  Note that after locale is updated you will need to shutdown the AppVM and restart it for changes to take effect.

Here is one way to change locale:
localedef -f UTF-8 -i en_US -c en_US.UTF-8
update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

And here is another (note the lowercase use of utf8)
localedef -f UTF-8 -i en_US -c en_US.UTF-8
localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.utf8

Please report back if this helps solve your issue.

[Greg Strong]

 WOOT!  Thank you, Jason, that was just what I needed.  I ran 'xterm' with 'Run command in vm' which gave me a command prompt, and I entered the two commands from option 1 and that solved all my problems.  Terminal now runs, along with some other programs that wouldn't come up (like qGo).

Thanks again,
Greg

[cprise]

> --

Greg, can you tell me if Files/nautilus runs reliably now? I'm still
having trouble with that one.

[Greg Strong]

Yes, unfortunately I seem to have that issue also.  Nautilus doesn't start for me either :(

[cprise]

On 04/19/15 20:37, Greg Strong wrote:
> Yes, unfortunately I seem to have that issue also. Nautilus doesn't
> start for me either :(
>

> --

It should start if you try it a second/third time within about 7 seconds
of the last time.

This has to do with the way the gnome session handler is started in
debian 8 (whereas d7 apparently did things differently and didn't
display this problem).