How can I undo ALL terminal changes at once?

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Level 1

8 points

How can I undo ALL terminal changes at once?

Is there a way to undo ALL of the changes I have ever made using terminal at one time instead of reverting them one by one? I tried what I saw on a few other posts that said to go to Macintosh HD > Users > username > Library > Preferences and drag the file called "com.apple.Terminal.plist" to the trash (while terminal was not running) but it did not solve my problem. All of the changes I've done still remain.

Thank you to anyone who can help.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Oct 18, 2011 6:17 PM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 18, 2011 10:33 PM in response to Aszarmack

Not if they were individual Terminal commands that affected other processes. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

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Answer 2

Aszarmack Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 19, 2011 8:24 AM in response to baltwo

What happened is I was entering terminal commands that I was copying and pasting from a list I had found online and I accidentally highlighted/copied a bunch of the commands from that list without realizing it and when I pasted them into terminal...it started automatically running a bunch of commands I didn't want. Probably around 15 or so. It changed a lot of things that I have been trying to go back and undo one at a time but it's been very confusing on what changed exactly and if I am properly undoing them back to original state. I was hoping there was some kind of command or way to reset all changes I've ever done using terminal back to their default settings.

Someone from another post said to go to Macintosh HD > Users > username > Library > Preferences and drag the file called "com.apple.Terminal.plist" to the trash (while terminal was not running) but it did not solve my problem. All of the changes I've done still remain.

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Answer 3

X423424X

Level 6

14,265 points

Oct 19, 2011 8:46 AM in response to Aszarmack

As said above, once you do a command in the terminal (e.g., cp, mv, rm, etc.) that's it. There's no going back except from using backups of the original stuff.

The thing you read about the plist is for the terminal application itself. It has a bunch of its own preferences you can set and removing its plist effectively will reset terminal to its default preferences the next time it launches. It has nothing to do with the commands you enter into a terminal window.

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Answer 4

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 19, 2011 10:56 AM in response to Aszarmack

Thanks for clarifying. As noted, you'll have to undo each defaults change you made. If the commands you erroneously ran had settings such as TRUE or FALSE, reverse them. If they were zero or one, reverse them.

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Answer 5

Aszarmack Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 19, 2011 10:59 AM in response to baltwo

Thanks guys. I went back one at a time an undid each command and now the problem is solved. I've learned to be more careful in the future.

Thanks again.

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