Ubuntu odd problem: can't see any text in "Terminal"

beeblequix · 10-25-2007, 08:39 PM

howdy folks,

I've had Ubuntu 7.10 installed on one of my PCs for a number of weeks and I really like it. I must have installed some package or something because when I open "Terminal" I just see a white screen. I can type inside of it and commands are executed (such as "exit" or "konsole") but it's just white. Any ideas?

pljvaldez · 10-25-2007, 08:42 PM

Use your mouse to look in konsole's settings. You might have white text on a white background.

beeblequix · 10-26-2007, 11:18 AM

It's not Konsole, it's the Gnome Terminal 2.18.2.

I can click on the top of the window and go through the different settings but it looks ok there. My color scheme doesn't look problematic (black text, light background) and my character encoding set UTF-8.

I'll try reinstalling gnome-terminal & gnome-terminal-data. Maybe something got messed up while adding new packages.

beeblequix · 10-26-2007, 11:43 AM

I found it. It has something to do with the restricted Nvidia drivers for my Geforce4 ti4600. Firstly, I had my Gnome Terminal still up when I logged off my user. For a split second I could see Terminal text. I logged in, disabled the Nvidia accelerated graphics driver, rebooted and opened up Terminal. It works just fine. Now that I at least know what it is I'll just have to live with a broken Terminal cause 3d accel is a tad more important.

SilentSam · 10-26-2007, 12:16 PM

I have kind of the same problem with my Nvidia graphics driver and ALL fonts. They're rendered quite hideously. I found a partial solution by setting the proper refresh rate for my resolution, and the fonts are then rendered properly.

From time to time, X resets something (like after using fullscreen direct rendering) and the fonts are hideous again. I then much around with the KDE resolution tweaks to get them pretty again (yes this happens in Gnome too, I have a separate Ubuntu partition).
You shouldn't have to live with a non-visible terminal.

beeblequix · 11-01-2007, 10:40 AM

So I did a little more playing around with it. I installed kdm to be the manager with Gnome2 as the desktop environmnet and now it works well enough. Both 3d accel and my Gnome Terminal are quite visible. Somewhere in there I also reinstalled the Nvidia drivers. Except that my login window after I've logged out (not from bootup) is too big for the monitor everything else seems fine and I'm not that concerned about it.