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Cannot open Terminal

D

dscuber9000

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 16, 2007
665
1
Indiana, US
I'm having trouble with a couple things on my MacBook Pro:

- Can't open Terminal
- When performing a back-up it gets around half-way done, then just stops with no alert or anything
- Cannot partition hard-drive to set up Boot Camp

Whenever I try to open up Terminal I get this message:
screenshot20110217at202.png


I've Googled for help, but the most common recommended solution is to make sure my login shell is set to "/bin/bash" but it already is. Any help would be very much appreciated!
 
Have you tried repairing permissions and checking the disk health with Disk Utility?

I'd also consider maybe re-running the latest combo updater to see if that resolves the issue.
 
No I haven't, I didn't know there was an option like that. :D It's going to take 17 minutes, but I keep seeing things like "Terminal permissions repaired" pop up in the thing, so I'm assuming it is working.

Edit: Repairing permissions didn't work, so I'll try the other things.
 
dscuber9000 said:
No I haven't, I didn't know there was an option like that. :D It's going to take 17 minutes, but I keep seeing things like "Terminal permissions repaired" pop up in the thing, so I'm assuming it is working.

Edit: Repairing permissions didn't work, so I'll try the other things.
Click to expand...

So two things:

-Definitely try re-running the combo updater.
-See if you can open X11 and run /usr/bin/login from there. Just curious.
 
Just got done running the combo update and still no luck. :(

In X11 I was able to log in and it told me the last time I logged in. Is that what I was supposed to see?
 
Please open X11. In the xterm window that appears, please enter

Code: 
cat /etc/shells

and post the output.
 
Code: 
# List of acceptable shells for chpass(1).
# Ftpd will not allow users to connect who are not using
# one of these shells.

/bin/bash
/bin/csh
/bin/ksh
/bin/sh
/bin/tcsh
/bin/zsh
 
dscuber9000 said:
Code: 
# List of acceptable shells for chpass(1).
# Ftpd will not allow users to connect who are not using
# one of these shells.

/bin/bash
/bin/csh
/bin/ksh
/bin/sh
/bin/tcsh
/bin/zsh
Click to expand...

Please enter the following:

Code: 
sudo cp /etc/shells*orig /etc/shells

in the xterm. Then try opening Terminal again.
 
I do, that's the frustrating thing. I just pulled up settings and my account, the only account on the Mac, is listed as Admin.
 
dscuber9000 said:
I do, that's the frustrating thing. I just pulled up settings and my account, the only account on the Mac, is listed as Admin.
Click to expand...

Now I'm thinking things are more messed up than I thought. If you're an admin, can you create a new admin account to temporarily work from (using the Accounts pane in System Preferences) ?
 
dscuber9000 said:
Yep, just created another admin account.
Click to expand...

So my guess is that Terminal won't open there either. In any case, open X11 in the new account and enter

Code: 
sudo cp /etc/shells*orig /etc/shells

You should be asked to supply the password for the new account you are using. If that happens, rather than you getting the error message you got on the old account, enter the password. Then logout of the new account, log in to the old one, and try opening Terminal.
 
No luck. It gave me that same error as soon as I entered the password.

However, on the original account, I also had to enter the password, if that makes any difference.
 
dscuber9000 said:
No luck. It gave me that same error as soon as I entered the password.

However, on the original account, I also had to enter the password, if that makes any difference.
Click to expand...

By the way, did Terminal open in that new account?

Well, you may as well delete that new account, by logging into you old account and going to the Accounts pane again.

Not sure what's going on here. An admin user should be able to use the sudo command. Do you have any idea of what might have caused the problems you listed in your first post?

I'm pretty sure I can get Terminal working, by having you boot into single-user mode and running that cp command. But I'm wondering if you really need to archive and reinstall the OS here.
 
No, Terminal didn't open in the new account either.

My last back-up was January 14th so I'm guessing that's when whatever happened, happened. I didn't notice that I couldn't access Terminal until a week ago and didn't think much of it. But I found out today I can't even partition my hard-drive to install Windows 7, so that's really annoying.

Edit: I tried running that command in single-user mode and it told me: "sudo: unknown uid: 0"

Do you suggest restoring my Mac to Jan. 14?
 
Last edited:
Well, if you want to try to get Terminal to work ...

1) Restart while holding command-s, to boot into single-user mode. You should get a black screen with white text, and a command line prompt sort of like in the xterm.

2) At the prompt, enter

Code: 
/sbin/fsck -fy

This will run a check of your file system. It may take some time, but you should eventually get a message that ends "appears to be OK"

3) At the prompt, enter

Code: 
/sbin/mount -uw /

This will mount the file system so that you can copy that file. There's no output from this command.

4) At the prompt, enter

Code: 
cp /etc/shells*orig /etc/shells

There's no output from this command.

5) At the prompt, enter

Code: 
reboot

6) Log in to your account and try Terminal again.
 
Terminal opened! Thank you so much! :D I'm running a back-up now so hopefully everything else works now too.

Thank you for sticking with me! :p
 
dscuber9000 said:
I got some kind of error in X11: "[myname] is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported."
Click to expand...

dscuber9000 said:
Terminal opened! Thank you so much! :D I'm running a back-up now so hopefully everything else works now too.
Click to expand...
Does this command give any error (after you type your admin password)?

sudo -v

[i.e., i don't see anything above which would have fixed the sudoers problem in post #13]
 
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