How to manage a nonfunctional Terminal in OS X

The OS X Terminal is an exceptionally useful tool for getting to the underpinnings of OS X and troubleshooting problematic aspects of the system, developing and testing code, and managing remote connections among many other details. When you launch the Terminal, the system should load the default shell in which you can execute various programs and scripts, but depending on how you have configured your system the shell may not load and instead show a blank Terminal window.

There are a couple of possible reasons why this might happen, which are that the default shell configuration for your account may be corrupted, or the Terminal program itself might not be working properly.

1. Shell configuration The default shell for user accounts is the popular Bash shell, which is configured in the Users & Groups system preferences in the Advanced settings for a user. When you load the OS X Terminal utility the program will by default launch this assigned shell, but if there is a problem with the shell's configuration then it may not load. Most shells use hidden files at the root of the user account to save various environmental configurations, startup scripts, and other details, which if corrupt may prevent the shell from starting. For the Bash shell, the configuration files include the following:
   

   Setting another shell in the T... [Read more]