Cannot start xconsole or gnome-terminal after update

Question

I use fluxbox, and I have gnome-terminal bound to a keyboard shortcut as well as a menu item. However, since upgrading to GNOME 2.26, gnome-terminal would not start. There is no visual indication of failure; the window just doesn't show up.
I also tried xconsole (by adding xconsole to the menu through TTY), and I get a message saying simply that "couldn't open console"
I read something about the permissions of /dev/console not being set probably, and that commenting out lines in /etc/fbtab would help, but no such table file exists on my system.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

I am not sure whether the following patch makes sense but it fixes aforementioned problems with gnome-terminal.
By following the suggestion from http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=564649 I have created the following patch:
--- src/terminal.c 2009-03-30 18:17:08.000000000 +0100
+++ src/terminal.c 2009-05-09 21:14:25.129888742 +0100
@@ -448,11 +448,11 @@
* session bus running), we'd crash later on. Tell the user about it
* now, and exit. See bug #561663.
- if (!gconf_ping_daemon ())
- g_printerr ("Failed to contact the GConf daemon; exiting.\n");
- exit (1);
+/* if (!gconf_ping_daemon ()) */
+/* { */
+/* g_printerr ("Failed to contact the GConf daemon; exiting.\n"); */
+/* exit (1); */
+/* } */
gtk_window_set_default_icon_name (GNOME_TERMINAL_ICON_NAME);
and modified the PKGBUILD:
# $Id$
# Maintainer: Jan de Groot <[email protected]>
pkgname=gnome-terminal
pkgver=2.26.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="The GNOME Terminal Emulator"
arch=(i686 x86_64)
license=('GPL')
depends=('gconf>=2.26.0-2' 'vte>=0.20.1' 'startup-notification>=0.9')
makedepends=('pkgconfig' 'gnome-doc-utils>=0.16.0' 'intltool')
options=('!emptydirs')
url="http://www.gnome.org"
groups=('gnome-extra')
install=gnome-terminal.install
source=(http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/${pkgname}/2.26/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.bz2 ${pkgname}-${pkgver}.patch)
md5sums=('49acf3da4c820249b763d636f27e3a46' '0862775e42f767b9dc4a1f59bbd9e527')
build() {
cd "${srcdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}"
patch -p0 < ${startdir}/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.patch
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc \
--localstatedir=/var --disable-scrollkeeper || return 1
make || return 1
make GCONF_DISABLE_MAKEFILE_SCHEMA_INSTALL=1 DESTDIR="${pkgdir}" install || return 1
install -m755 -d "${pkgdir}/usr/share/gconf/schemas"
gconf-merge-schema "${pkgdir}/usr/share/gconf/schemas/${pkgname}.schemas" --domain gnome-terminal ${pkgdir}/etc/gconf/schemas/*.schemas || return 1
rm -f ${pkgdir}/etc/gconf/schemas/*.schemas
I installed modified gnome-terminal and works like a charm as a standalone application in my xmonad window manager session without tweaking env vars, gconf, dbus or gnome-settings-daemon.
Cheers, George