How to fix terminator not starting anymore?

Question

I am running terminator as my main terminal. The only change on my system that I remember was running

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y dist-upgrade

which ran fine. Yet terminator won't start anymore:

$ terminator 
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "overlay-scrollbar"
PluginRegistry::load_plugins: Importing plugin __init__.py failed: 'module' object has no attribute 'AVAILABLE'
Floating point exception (core dumped)

I tried purging it:

sudo apt purge -y terminator && \
sudo apt install -y terminator

Yet the issues prevails. How to make terminator start again?

Furthermore, the version of terminator does not appear to have been changed:

The version of terminator did not appear to change:

cat /var/log/apt/history.log | grep terminator
Commandline: apt purge terminator
Purge: terminator:amd64 (0.98-1)
Commandline: apt install terminator
Install: terminator:amd64 (0.98-1)
Commandline: apt purge terminator
Purge: terminator:amd64 (0.98-1)

Solution 1

Check your Python default version with:

python -V

Terminator does not work with Python 3. In my case that was exactly the problem. My default Python command was pointing to version 3 instead of version 2.

You can check your current default python with:

which python

As I already had Python 2.7 installed, as soon as I ran:

sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python

Terminator started to work again.

Solution 2

@desveladisimo's answer will fix your issue but you won't be able to use Python 3 as your default version. In order to use Python3 as default and still have terminator working, you can configure Terminator to use Python2 with the following steps:-

Edit the /usr/bin/terminator

sudo vi /usr/bin/terminator

and change the first line (shebang)

#!/usr/bin/python

to

#!/usr/bin/python2

Source - https://askubuntu.com/a/1156909

Solution 3

I was working under the assumption that purging terminator would delete its config. This was not the case. I had to manually delete it (be aware that your profile will be lost):

$ rm ~/.config/terminator/* -rfv

Source

Part of the error message are warning that can be ignored, namely:

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "overlay-scrollbar"
ConfigBase::load: Unable to open /home/philipp/.config/terminator/config ([Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/philipp/.config/terminator/config')
PluginRegistry::load_plugins: Importing plugin __init__.py failed: 'module' object has no attribute 'AVAILABLE'

This will always show as pointed on on this bug report

Deleting the config makes terminator start again.

Solution 4

I had a similar problem, which was caused by this part of my config file:

[profiles]
  [[default]]
    background_image = None
    foreground_color = "#ffffff"
    scrollback_lines = 5000
    use_custom_command = True

use_custom_command is True, but custom_command property is not set. Changing use_custom_command to False fixed it.

Solution 5

You can try to upgrade to the latest version, for which instructions are provided on the following page, after the project moved to GitHub:

https://github.com/gnome-terminator/terminator/blob/master/INSTALL.md

View more solutions

Comments

[Jos]

You may want to report a bug.

[Jos]

Also, see if the dist-upgrade upgraded terminator. Look in /var/log/apt/history.log. If so, you may be able to downgrade.

[sudcha]

@Jos It appears I always had terminator 0.98-1 all along.

[Jos]

Good to see that you got it working again. I would have thought that the Floating point exception (core dumped) would be a bug.

[sudcha]

@Jos I guess it had to do with a config issue, yet since I deleted it right away I cannot compare to find the real cause :/

[Jos]

Also, I thought purge did remove all configuration files.

[Iago Leão]

I was also using python3

[pitosalas]

Same here. Thanks. But why does having 3.x as default break terminator? Is it written in python?

[Rafael Gomes Francisco]

Perfect awnser!

[Jeff]

This is the best answer since Terminator is dependent on a specific version of Python. Allows me to have Python3 for generic work while keeping Terminator happy with a specific version.

[Federico Baù]

This is supposed to be a more correct answer. +1