bug#53233: installing gnome-terminal on a foreign distribution causes login to fail

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Leo!

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> writes:

> On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 12:42:18PM -0500, Maxim Cournoyer wrote:
>> Hello Guix,
>> 
>> I'm lacking investigation detail, but this seems worthy of reporting.
>> 
>> I had tested installing gnome-terminal from guix on top of a Debian
>> stable distribution, and was surprised that login would not longer work
>> (!)  until I 'guix remove gnome-terminal' from a TTY.
>
> On Debian 11 (current stable), I did this:
>
>                              recent commit, from today
>                            |
> ------                       ▼
> $ guix time-machine --commit=ea71ec1630e06503c14c6e7f4570b69de4e42123 -- 
> install gnome-terminal
> $ gnome-terminal
> # Error creating terminal: The name org.gnome.Terminal was not provided by 
> any .service files
> $
> ------

Yes, this is because gnome-terminal installs dbus services that aren't
found without messing with the host dbus config.

> So, it doesn't work in general. But, it also doesn't break login. I
> tried `bash --login` and also logged in from the console in another TTY.
>
> However, my system doesn't use a desktop environment or login manager. I
> login from the console and run `startx`.

OK, perhaps this explains why.  My testing was with GDM/GNOME atop
Debian 9.

Thanks for trying it!

Maxim