Server that creates terminals failed to start

[suedunham]

Description of your problem

When shutting down Spyder, I get the error message attached. This occurred after upgrading to version 5.3.0 with -c conda-forge.

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Open Spyder
2. Close Spyder

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
I expect untroubled serenity, except for my own appalling code. Instead, I get told to come here.

Please provide any additional information below
I've attached the error log. Github wouldn't allow me to attach the out log as it is empty. Additionally, the terminal itself does not fill the entire space allotted to it, though it seems otherwise open. A simple dir command worked.

Also, the terminal no longer appears in Tools > Preferences > Plugins.

Versions and main components

• Terminal Version: 1.2.0
• Spyder Version: 5.3.0
• Python Version: 3.9.9
• Operating system: Windows 10

spyder_terminal_err.log

[steff456]

Hi @suedunham,

How did you installed Spyder and Spyder-terminal? Is this happening all the times you open/close Spyder or is it casually?
I don't see anything wrong in the log you attached, so also let me know if you changed something else in Spyder to try it on my end.

[suedunham]

It's been a while since I installed it, so I'm not sure I remember just how I did it. I do recall that installing it one way seemed to give me an older version of Spyder with a newer version of Python, and installing it a different way gave me a more current Spyder with Python 3.7. I tried a few ways: Spyder's installer, Anaconda, Miniconda, eventually settling on setting up a Miniconda installation. I think I then fudged the Spyder installation to give me the latest Spyder (5.2.something) with Python 3.9, though I don't remember just how I got there. Perhaps Miniconda first, then creating a "Spyder" environment with Python 3.9, then perhaps conda install spyder -c conda-forge from the command line.

The terminal, I think I had an installer for version 1.1 and updated it to 1.2 somehow.

I played around with it but put it aside. Later, opening it up, I was getting "Program was unable to start" dialogs every couple minutes or so, so I tried to restore factory defaults and then conda updated it to 5.3 hoping that would fix things. I now get terminal error message every time I close Spyder. I've even removed the terminal panel from view, though I'm not sure how to remove the plugin entirely. The unable to start dialogs were gone for a bit, but now they seem to have returned.

[steff456]

Can you please try to reinstall everything in a new environment to see if that fixes things?

conda create -n test python=3.9 -c conda-forge
conda activate test
conda install -c conda-forge spyder spyder-terminal

In case you don't want to use the terminal anymore you can also uninstall it from your current environment and error messages should stop. You can do it using conda uninstall spyder-terminal

Let me know if this helps!

[suedunham]

Both fixes seemed to work. As it happens, my original Spyder environment was named "Spyder52" which is now out of date, so I needed a new environment anyway. 😄

Interestingly, having opened the old installation first, closing it, and then opening the new one would trigger the "Application is unable to start" warning once on startup. Closing and reopening the new would seem to clear that. Removing spyder-terminal from the old one also cleared that up.

In the new one, however, the terminal still does not appear in Tools > Preferences > Plugins. It does appear in View > Panes. The terminal itself only fills a portion of the width allotted to that portion of the Spyder layout. I only mention this as a FYI, since the main issue is resolved.

[suedunham]

Oops, spoke too soon. Things work fine when opening Spyder from the desktop shortcut. However, when I open it in the command line with

conda activate spyder
spyder

I get the "Application was unable to start" dialog along with fromIccProfile: failed minimal tag size sanity in the (regular, external to Spyder) terminal from which I opened it.

[steff456]

Can you upload a screenshot with the error please?

[suedunham]

Hmm, now it doesn't seem to be happening anymore. [Edit: it's back. I had a different instance of Spyder previously open, which seems to have suppressed the error.] I still get the tag size sanity bit in the terminal though.

Here it was before: