Terminal won't open anymore?

I don’t know what’s happening lately but after the latest package updates, i wasn’t able to start linux anymore and it booted in emergency mode. So I reinstalled gnome, and after a while I couldn’t start gnome-terminal or gnome-console anymore. Tried xfce4-terminal, same. I reinstalled again using cinnamon this time, same issue. Downgraded the kernel, nothing changed. dmesg and journalctl won’t show anything useful… I was wondering if it is something on my side or is anybody else having a similar problem?

edit: since this laptop is using an SSD an there’s no smart support, I can’t check if it’s dying or something but the windows partition is working fine…

Can you get to a TTY? (Ctrl+Alt+F1 or 2 or 3 …)

  • Run sudo pacman -Syyu just to ensure you are up to date.

  • Install another terminal, alacritty or kitty are good:

sudo pacman -S kitty kitty-terminfo

Does kitty run?

  • Is xterm installed? Does it run?

Other than that - no ideas.

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Are your configuration files for bash in order, inside your $HOME?
See:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/bash#Configuration_files
If these are normal and untouched,
you might check your environment variables.

More specifically the $PATH environment variable:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/environment_variables#Per_user

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/environment_variables#Per_session_or_shell

Examples

if you want only to specific user edit ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc and put there

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

if you want for all users edit /etc/profile and scroll down until you see something like

# Set our default path
PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin"
export PATH

append to the end /usr/local/bin. it will be

PATH="/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin"

(Source.)

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It seems that was it, my custom bashrc in home was corrupted and when I restored it from a backup (also corrupted) I couldn’t start terminal. Still, I don’t know why the whole system wasn’t unable to mount the first time and made me reinstall… well, at least I can start over. Thanks!

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