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Why won't the Terminal log in?
- Thread starter Zach808
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Can you post a screenshot of what your Terminal looks like? Will make it a little easier to grasp what is happening on your system.
learn how to attach a picture, bro.
Click this button,
, next to the smiley face and upload your picture.
Click this button,
Have you checked out your Terminal preferences? Check the Startup section and the Shell tab in the Settings section to see if anything is out of sorts there.
This can happen sometimes when the .profile or .bash_profile file has commands that crash the login. Are you able to type anything in your Terminal window? The above files are hidden so you won't see them in Finder unless you've turned on hidden files. They are located in your home folder, though not everyone has them by default. You can use the Secrets preference panel to turn on hidden files. If you have the above mentioned files you can rename them and see if Terminal starts up normally. If so, then there's something wrong in the file.
Go to Terminal preferences and on the Startup tab, switch the bottom radio to the second item and set it to /bin/bash and see if that makes a difference. Also, since it lets you type try doing /bin/ls and see if it lists the current directory.
Sorry to bring up this thread - but I've been having this problem for roughly a month and I FINALLY figured out the solution. Next time it happens, just open up Activity Monitor and check to see if there is a "sudo" command still running. If there is, just quit the process and restart terminal.
My problem was occured when my system would be under heavy load and I'd have an apple script that would delete a set of files run. It wouldn't run the last command in the proper terminal window so the "rm" command would still have the password prompt open. Another applescript would close all terminal windows and the password prompt would leave the sudo process running.
My problem was occured when my system would be under heavy load and I'd have an apple script that would delete a set of files run. It wouldn't run the last command in the proper terminal window so the "rm" command would still have the password prompt open. Another applescript would close all terminal windows and the password prompt would leave the sudo process running.
Wanted to add a thanks for the final, highly useful tip in this thread.
I had the same thing happen, in my case because I had some .command batch files that included sudo, and I'd accidentally closed one of the Terminal windows while this was still asking for a prompt. I'd expected it to kill the process, but instead the sudo was sitting there waiting, and locking up new Terminal windows.
I could see all the login processes sitting there in Activity Monitor--one for each window I tried to open, all of which refused to Force Quit--but didn't realize there was also a sudo sitting somewhere that was the actual problem.
Surprising that, of all the things that came up in a Google search for blank terminal windows or stuck login processes, none suggested this.
I had the same thing happen, in my case because I had some .command batch files that included sudo, and I'd accidentally closed one of the Terminal windows while this was still asking for a prompt. I'd expected it to kill the process, but instead the sudo was sitting there waiting, and locking up new Terminal windows.
I could see all the login processes sitting there in Activity Monitor--one for each window I tried to open, all of which refused to Force Quit--but didn't realize there was also a sudo sitting somewhere that was the actual problem.
Surprising that, of all the things that came up in a Google search for blank terminal windows or stuck login processes, none suggested this.