Csdrhrt

After installing MySQL 5.1.50 64-bit and running the package that configures MyQL to run at startup, the Terminal app now sporadically display a blank window, like so:

I managed to get the command prompt back after following the instructions from the MacFixIt column at CNET : OS X Terminal displays a blank window instead of a command prompt

However, the Terminal will intermittently go blank and I have to repeat the process again and it's driving me nuts. The CNET article cures the symtoms but the cause of this problem is still unknown. Does anyone has any theories or experiences to share in order to fix this annoying problem permanently?

A common cause for this is a hung "sudo" process. If you run sudo and it prompts for your password, but you close the terminal, sudo will hang forever waiting for the password, and this blocks any other logins until you kill it.

The solution is to kill the "sudo" process with Activity Monitor.

I believe sudo has been fixed on Mac OS X Lion 10.7 to exit if you close the terminal.

Try running jobs at the Terminal to see if that shell has any child processes in the background. If there is something super heavy running in the background maybe it is causing the shell to become unresponsive?

I just had the exact same problem, though it occurred after installing Git (or at least that is when I noticed the issue).

I opened the Activity Monitor and selected to show all processes. I noticed root was running several (> 10) login processes, few sh processes and a sudo process. I force-quitted them all, though some login processes didn't quit—probably the sudo kept them hanging. After this, Terminal worked normally and the excessive login processes I couldn't kill quitted.

I think the trick is to look for login and shell related processes which could hang new ones. Probably, in my case, killing the sudo would've been sufficient enough.

The CNet article you referred is good for a last resort.

1. Launch Activity Monitor


2. Select "All Processes, Hierarchically"


3. Look for your Terminal process


4. Try to spot a process that might be "stuck" and interfering with the login

Or:

1. run fg in each active shell window

In my case, somehow git diff head had got put in the background in one of my shells, so git and less appeared under a shell in which I thought there was just a bash process. When I did fg it fixed the problem. If most of your windows/tabs are just "login -> bash" then it should be easy to spot.

I actually found that the issue, for me, was related to a hung "login" process. In following the suggestion above, I did not see any "sudo" process within the list from Activity Monitor, but I did notice a lot of "login" processes owned by root. I went through and started killing these, and one of them triggered something and the prompt came back within iTerm for me. I was able to avoid rebooting the machine.