Terminal Asks for password

Question

Level 1

8 points

Terminal Asks for password

Hi,

When I open the terminal app it prompts for a password before it displays the prompt. I can type my password, then the prompt is displayed and terminal appears to run as expected.
I have compared the preferences to another machine that does not ask for the password and they are the same. I have run a permissions repair and removed the ~/library/preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist but neither has fixed the problem.

Any suggestions as to what might be the issue?

Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Mar 28, 2011 1:52 AM

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Answer 1

BobHarris

Level 9

53,003 points

Mar 28, 2011 6:36 AM in response to Mouchel

Either you have something in your .bash_profile (or .bash_login, or .profile) that is running a command that wants your password, or your terminal default session has been configured to ssh into another system (which could be localhost, aka yourself).

So look at the shell initializations files I mentioned above. See what they are doing. You could always edit the shell initialization file and add


set -x

at the very beginning to see exactly what it is doing when you login. Remote the "set -x" when you are finished.

To see if you have your Terminal preferences configured to ssh, you could enter the following


printenv | grep ssh

If you get


SSH_CLIENT=::1 49801 22
SSH_TTY=/dev/ttys001
SSH_CONNECTION=::1 49801 ::1 22

chances are you have been issuing the ssh command as part of your Terminal preferences.

By the way, Terminal, Unix, X11, and command line command, ssh, rsync, etc... questions are best asked in the Mac OS X Technologies > Unix Forum
<http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735>

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Answer 2

Mouchel Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 30, 2011 1:41 AM in response to BobHarris

Thanks for the reply.

Before I have even had a chance to check your suggestions its seems to have fixed itself.

Very strange.

Thanks anyway.

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Answer 3

ali811

Level 1

0 points

Sep 6, 2013 1:01 PM in response to Mouchel

I had the same issue on my work machine where they use opendirectory for authentication and authorization. Restarting the opendirectory daemon fixed the issue.

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Answer 4

Nov 26, 2013 3:03 AM in response to ali811

After reading this, my biggest problem was 'how do I restart the opendirectory daemon'? I took the computer of the domain, and reconnected it, but that is hardly an elegant solution I think.

Thanks..

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Answer 5

ali811

Level 1

0 points

Nov 26, 2013 3:48 PM in response to Radiognome

To restart opendirectory: Open Finder > Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.

In Activity Monitor's search bar search for opendirectoryd, select opendirectoryd process and select Quit Process from View menu

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Answer 6

Nov 27, 2013 11:00 AM in response to ali811

Thanks. Was looking for a launchctl-like command or something similar to my Linux daemons "/etc/init.d/[service] restart". Could not find something quickly. Never thought about Activity Monitor...

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

238,973 points

Nov 28, 2013 10:40 AM in response to Radiognome

In Terminal...

man launchctl

It'd be something like...

$ sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openldap.slapd.plist

$ sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openldap.slapd.plist

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