Content

Introductory

I have recently installed the latest 4.5.5.7 version of the PAC Manager Terminal Emulator to make it easier to manage SSH my contacts.

I really liked the rich interface and many useful features. I also set up the first SSH connection and then when I wanted to connect, the PAC Manager window faded and nothing happened. The window could be closed, then restarted. But he didn't join anywhere.

In this brief description, I will share the solution to this problem, which is so simple in retrospect, but I had to search for what I found. So if someone else is in the same shoe, you can save a little extra searching.

The problem

The problem was "just" that he refused to connect / start any SSH or terminal connection with the PAC Manager program. Instead of displaying a terminal window, the entire window of the program faded and responded to nothing. He only exited to close the window.

My operating system is Debian 9.5, desktop: LXDE.

At first, of course, I thought I was setting up something wrong, and then I tried to start the local terminal window, which did not require any setup, but it didn't start.

I also looked at the server log files to see if the server dropped the connection, but there was no clue, so the request didn't reach the destination machine.

Then I started the program from the terminal to see if I got an error message there. And, when the SSH connection should have started, he also made a mistake:

*** unhandled exception in callback:
***   Can't locate object method "new" via package "Gnome2::Vte::Terminal" (perhaps you forgot to load "Gnome2::Vte::Terminal"?) at /opt/pac/lib/PACTerminal.pm line 500.
***  ignoring at /opt/pac/lib/PACMain.pm line 1398.

So, I was able to find a more purposeful solution. Fortunately, after about 1 hour of searching, the solution was found.

The solution

In some places, including on the Sourceforge bug page, it has been written that Debian 9 is refusing to start a PAC Manager SSH connection and is looking for a solution. But then, on one side, a working solution was submitted:

Log in as root and install libvte-dev package:

apt-get install libvte-dev

This is a terminal emulator widget development package for the GTK + environment (Approx. 200 Mb in size).

Then delete some files from the PAC Manager installation directory structure:

find /opt/pac/ -name "Vte.so*" -exec rm {} \;

And finally, you need to install the missing Perl packages:

perl -MCPAN -e 'install Gnome2::Vte'

This runs nicely and you can now use the PAC Manager SSH / Terminal feature: