Gfilui

Ubuntu 17.10 (X.Org), GNOME 3.26.2.

I suddenly began having this problem when I try to run gnome-terminal, I can't figure out what caused this:

main19@system19:~$ gnome-terminal

Error constructing proxy for org.gnome.Terminal:/org/gnome/Terminal/Factory0: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.Terminal: Timeout was reached

This causes gnome-terminal not to start. I have tried looking online, everyone says it is a locale problem, here is my locale output:

main19@system19:~$ locale

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Output of localectl:

System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
VC Keymap: us
X11 Layout: us
X11 Model: pc105+inet
X11 Options: terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

I have run out of ideas, if anyone can provide help with this that would be great.

I ended up refreshing my HOME directory, cleaning out all kinds of old "junk" from it, paying special attention to cleaning out the .config directory. I also created a new user so I could get a fresh copy of the .bashrc and .profile files. This appears to have solved this (and another) problem.

This might be irrelevant for most, but uninstalling chrome-remote-desktop and then restarting the computer worked for me. The package is simple to remove:

sudo apt remove chrome-remote-desktop

This seems to be a known bug.

Simply removing the extension from Chrome was not enough, possibly because I have multiple Chrome profiles with that extension. I had to uninstall it using apt.

The bug report also mentions that simply disabling remote connections in the extension is enough, you don't have to remove the extension entirely.

Quickest fix: open a prompt using Alt-F2 and run the following line:

dconf reset -f /org/gnome/terminal/legacy/profiles:/

This cleans out all the gnome-terminal profiles. The problem might be caused by old profiles within gnome-terminal, that have unfinished command lines or invalid preferences.

(And try rebooting your system...)

Update:
Your problem persists over reboots, yet only in gnome-terminal. I think that means the problem should be somewhere in your configuration files for gnome-terminal.
To find out if it's just in your profile: try logging in as root using sudo -i.
Try gsettings list-recursively | grep -i term for clues.
Are there any clues in you .profile of .bashrc?