Terminal unable to run most commands

Question

Terminal unable to run most commands

Recently the terminal app on my iMac has been acting up. When I open the app, it displays the message: "-bash: touch: command not found". I am no longer able to run ruby from the terminal or access irb. Even simple commands such as ls result in "-bash: ls: command not found". The only terminal command that I have been able to run so far is pwd. This iMac is relatively new to me. I purchased it secondhand in December, upgraded the RAM, and restored it using Migration assistant. I have no idea about the purview of this iMac before I purchased it. Yesterday, I did install the 10.11.3 El-Capitan update. Since I have been attempting to use this computer for learning ruby development, right now it seems to be useless for that purpose.

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), iMac (20-inch, Early 2008)

Posted on Jan 28, 2016 1:06 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

74,442 points

Jan 28, 2016 1:40 PM in response to AntonyFromWatertown

AntonyFromWatertown wrote:

I logged in as a different user, and terminal worked from there. I might have a corrupted .bashrc file. How do I fix this without proper access to terminal?

There are several ways, but the easiest I can think of is: choose a different shell.

Open Terminal's Preferences and change the shell to /bin/tcsh

Open a new window. It will run the new default shell. You can then rename the .bashrc file to, say, .bashrc-old, reset your shell and try again to make sure that it works (or just stay with /bin/tcsh).

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Answer 2

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Jan 28, 2016 1:14 PM in response to AntonyFromWatertown

if you purchased it second hand please see this document.

What to do before selling or giving away your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 3

Jan 28, 2016 1:40 PM in response to AntonyFromWatertown

I was able to repair my .bash_profile using TextMate.

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Answer 4

Jan 28, 2016 1:22 PM in response to AntonyFromWatertown

I logged in as a different user, and terminal worked from there. I might have a corrupted .bashrc file. How do I fix this without proper access to terminal?

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Answer 5

Jan 28, 2016 1:20 PM in response to JimmyCMPIT

When I purchased the iMac, it had 1 GB of ram, and was running an unpatched version of snow leopard. My guess is that it had been wiped.

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