[mdemone]

Hey everyone,

Every time I open Terminal, the path to a certain executable on my computer automatically inserts itself. It looks like pasting that path is in some kind of startup script or something, and what's worse is that it exits (completes the process) and then I have a useless Terminal window after it does this. Upon selecting New Command -> login, the path (which is "/Users/blahblah/stuff/exe; exit") puts itself in the Login box and then asks me for a password. Hitting Enter and then logging in with the necessary username and password then gives me a usable shell, but it says:

tcsh: Cannot open /etc/termcap.
tcsh: using dumb terminal settings.

And now, nothing seems to work. Tab completion is no longer functional, and the executable named in the path above isn't recognized.

I have no idea what's going on here, and I'm fairly new to Darwin and OS X, not to mention Unix itself. I'd greatly appreciate any advice you guys could give. Thanks!

[Juggle5]

I'm not the biggest expert here, but here are a few thoughts:

1. Open the preferences in Terminal and see if there is some command running by default. (mine just executes the default login shell, and doesn't load any special .term file)

2. Check to see if you have a .login or a .cshrc or a .tcshrc file in your home directory. If so, try moving these to .cshrc.bakup (or something like that). There's likely some command in one of these that's always executing. I believe that there are other places for setup files.. perhaps in your Library directory somewhere.

3. I usually just open a new terminal when I need a new shell, which works fine. I tried doing the New Command --> login deal, and I get the same errors you do.

Good luck!

[mdemone]

Thanks for the tips! I renamed the .cshrc file temporarily, but that doesn't seem to have fixed anything. In the meantime, I've discovered that tab-completion still works in bash, but not in csh or tcsh. I also managed to get new shells to load the normal login script, which is fine. Before all this, starting a new shell/Terminal would usually log me in automatically.

I have no idea what's going on, but it's functional enough now to get my work done for the time being.

[Gary Kerbaugh]

   It's my guess that the "ExecutionString" key in the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist preference file has had it's value set to a string that the Terminal thinks you want to execute every time you open a Terminal window. Basically a bug (or misguided feature) caused the Terminal to write that string into it's preferences. Your problem will be solved if you open the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist file, find the "ExecutionString" key and empty it's value. However, unless you're familiar with this type of thing, it's probably easier to trash the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist file. The Terminal will create a new one for you. You may have to reset a few preferences but it shouldn't be a big deal as there aren't that many preferences.