Terminal stops responding

Question

Terminal stops responding

I have a 2015 Macbook Pro with macOS Sierra 10.12.3 installed from an image created by my company's IT department. I use the terminal for development activities daily, but after a few hours the terminal becomes unresponsive. There doesn't seem to be a specific command associated with the lockup, and Activity Monitor does not show anything running. It's just completely blank. If I force quit the terminal, the window will disappear, but I can not re-launch the terminal again. If I try to logout, reboot, or shut down the laptop (via apple menu), the OS does not respond to the command. If I use a shell from a 3rd party tool, top and ps commands have no output, and those terminals become unresponsive.

Most other applications will run properly in this state, but in order to get back to a functional terminal, I need to hold down the power button until the system does a hard shutdown, then everything will seem normal after rebooting.

I have never seen anything like this before, nor can I find anything like it on Google or this help forum. Nearly every case other than mine, people are still able to see the Activity Monitor, or open up a 3rd party terminal app to run ps or top. At the very least, people are able to reboot their computer from the Apple menu in the top corner.

Someone at our IT department said they had solved the problem by re-imaging the device, but I was hoping for a solution that wouldn't reduce my productivity for the next couple days.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS Sierra (10.12.3), null

Posted on Mar 17, 2017 12:28 PM

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Answer 1

Eric Root

Level 10

685,299 points

Mar 18, 2017 9:23 AM in response to imthefrizzlefry

Do a backup, using either Time Machine or a cloning program, to ensure files/data can be recovered. Two backups are better than one.

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work. The intent is to see if it is specific to one account or a system wide problem. This account can be deleted later.

Isolating an issue by using another user account

If the problem is still there, try booting into the Safe Mode using your normal account. Disconnect all peripherals except those needed for the test. Shut down the computer and then power it back up after waiting 10 seconds. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal. This will reset some caches, forces a directory check, and disables all startup and login items, among other things. When you reboot normally, the initial reboot may be slower than normal. If the system operates normally, there may be 3rd party applications which are causing a problem. Try deleting/disabling the third party applications after a restart by using the application un-installer or by using the developer’s uninstall instructions. For each disable/delete, you will need to restart if you don't do them all at once.

Safe Mode - About El Capitan also Sierra

Safe Mode Startup – El Capitan. also Sierra

If it works in the Safe Mode, try running this program when booted normally and then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. On the screen with Options, please open Options and check the bottom 2 boxes before running. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy to Clipboard” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown.

Etrecheck – System Information

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Answer 2

dot.com

Level 4

2,455 points

Mar 17, 2017 1:25 PM in response to imthefrizzlefry

When you try and run Terminal after it hung and you re-launch do you get any error or just nothing happens? Is there any messages that appear in your Console.app screen when you try and run Terminal again? Does Activity Monitor show the Terminal as being "unresponsive" before you force-quit it?

My guess as to why the other tools don't show anything either is that something was mangled up with the "/dev/tty" devices, which all terminal i/o apps need.

Good luck...

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Answer 3

Mar 27, 2017 10:28 AM in response to Eric Root

I never receive an error message in this scenario; the only indicator that something is wrong, is the dreaded pinwheel of death when I move the mouse over the terminal window. The Console.app stops displaying anything after the terminal stops responding. Once the terminal stops responding, no new information appears in Activity Monitor, and it displays absolutely nothing is running (Completely blank list of processes). I guess that means no to your question about terminal appearing as unresponsive before I force-quit it.

I was able to reproduce the issue with another account on the same machine, and in Safe Mode. I tried uninstalling a few applications, but ultimately, our IT department just wiped out the machine and loaded a fresh image a few days ago. I have not experienced again after that.

We have made the assumption that there was some corruption when applying the system image to the machine. So far, it seems to be working, but we never were able to confirm the exact source.

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2017 12:15 PM in response to imthefrizzlefry

A followup on this issue. After completely wiping the hard drive and having a new OS image installed by IT (the same image that works on hundreds of other computers,) the issue continues to reproduce. The most recent occurances were when attempting to send an email using Outlook (only app running) to IT explaining I have the issue, everything locked up, and I was forced to do a hard reset. And then also when running Chrome Browser (again, it was the only app running) attempting to write this post to the forum.

I have also seen this issue occur when attempting to unlock my computer, after entering my username and password, pressing enter caused my computer to stop responding for nearly 10 minutes, so I had to do a hard reset.

My only conclusion at this point is that this must be a hardware issue, because I don't have any software installed that isn't widely used at the company.

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