Terminal does not login; blank window

Question

Level 1

4 points

Terminal does not login; blank window

Hello!

I use the Terminal occasionally and today I had to run a sudo command. It asked for my password, but I decided to cancel the command because I was in a hurry. I quit the terminal and now, every time I open it, nothing happens.

There is a white window where every command just does not work! Nothing happens!!
You can type in what you want, but nothing else.

Any suggestions?

15" MacBookPro5,1 (Late 2008), Mac OS X (10.6.4), EFI Firmware 1.8

Posted on Jul 9, 2010 2:48 AM

Reply

Answer 1

lentife Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 9, 2010 2:52 AM in response to lentife

I checked the preferences and the Shell should open with the default login shell (usr/bin/login).
Still, a blank 80x24 window where nothing happens.

Reply

Answer 2

WZZZ

Level 6

13,226 points

Jul 9, 2010 5:02 AM in response to lentife

You may have to redo your preferences after this, but move ~Library/com.apple.Terminal.Plist to the trash (don't empty it until you know this is OK) and restart. The present one may have become corrupted. This will generate a new, clean Preference file.

Reply

Answer 3

lentife Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 9, 2010 5:13 AM in response to WZZZ

Unfortunately this didn't solve it.. I really don't understand why...
Maybe it has to do with the last command I entered? It was a sudo command, that required a password that I didn't enter, because I decided to quit the app.
I'm not really familiar with commands, I just follow tutorials etc...

Reply

Answer 4

WZZZ

Level 6

13,226 points

Jul 9, 2010 5:15 AM in response to lentife

Open Activity Monitor>all processes. Is anything related to Terminal running?

Reply

Answer 5

lentife Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 9, 2010 5:22 AM in response to WZZZ

Do you know processes that are related to it? There is nothing containing the word terminal... But maybe it is some kind of daemon or process that cause this!

Reply

Answer 6

WZZZ

Level 6

13,226 points

Jul 9, 2010 6:20 AM in response to lentife

try the ps command? Oops sorry, stupidly forgot you can't run Terminal. Don't know what it could be.

EDIT Did you restart after trashing the .Plist?

Message was edited by: WZZZ

Message was edited by: WZZZ

Reply

Answer 7

BobHarris

Level 9

55,109 points

Jul 9, 2010 6:32 AM in response to lentife

As an experiment, download and try iTerm (free download)
<http://iterm.sourceforge.net/>

If iTerm fails the same way, then the problem has nothing to do with Terminal. If iTerm works, then it is something specific to Terminal.

Using iTerm is a way to narrow down where the problem might be.

You said you were following a tutorial, so it is also possible that some steps in the tutorial before the sudo command actually messed things up, but it would not be evident until you restarted Terminal.

Oh yea. Terminal and Unix oriented questions are best asked in the Mac OS X Technologies > Unix Forum
<http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735>

Message was edited by: BobHarris

Reply