Unable to start new gnome terminals from shell script when remotely logging in through ssh

Question

Background: I SSH into my Linux machine via Putty on my Windows machine. I am running VcXsrv on Windows and forwarding X over SSH. This is all working as expected.

I am running into issues opening gnome-terminal on the new display when executing the commands through a bash script.

When I execute these commands directly on the console, the new terminal server starts and I am able to start gnome terminal sessions that connect to the server.

$ /usr/libexec/gnome-terminal-server --app-id my.foo &
[1] 29553
$ gnome-terminal --app-id my.foo
$

However, when I place the same commands into a shell script, I get the following error:

contents of startGnomeTerm.sh

#!/bin/bash
/usr/libexec/gnome-terminal-server --app-id my.foo &
gnome-terminal --app-id my.foo

When executing the script

$ ./startGnomeTerm.sh
# Error creating terminal: The name my.foo was not provided by any .service files

---

I have even attempted to share all shell variables with the script by executing

$ export > shell_vars

Then placing this at the beginning of the script.

#!/bin/bash
source shell_vars
....

---

-UPDATE-

The solution is to add a slight delay to between the commands. Setting up the server takes longer than the script was allowing for, so the terminal tried to connect before the server was actually running.

Working script:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/libexec/gnome-terminal-server --app-id my.foo &
sleep 0.5
gnome-terminal --app-id my.foo

Answer 1

As discussed above: timing issue; introduce a sleep between the start of the terminal server and opening the new terminal. :)