Jim Gibson <> wrote:
> In article <930842d3-42dd-4c37-b620->, The
> Translucent Amoebae <> wrote:
>
> > Gawd forbid that i would actually ever use 'Terminal'
> > But the other day i was going to fool around with 'Hidden Folders'
> > As i'd noticed inadvertently during a file search that there were quite
> > a few 'very odd' documents and such on my desktop, that i couldn't see
> > !!!
> >
> > So anyways; When i tried to use Terminal
> > The Display showed this :
> >
> > Terminal Not Working ?
> > login: illegal option -- T
> > usage: login [-pq] [-h hostname] [username]
> > login -f [-lpq] [-h hostname] [username [prog [arg ...]]]
> > [Process completed]
> >
> > Whuck does this mean and how can i fix it ???
>
> It might mean that Terminal is trying to execute a start-up batch file
> and finding an invalid line. Which files Terminal tries to execute
> depends upon which shell your account uses.
>
> After you start Terminal, execute 'ls -a' and see if you have files
> like these:
That won't work - the translucent one can't get as far as the command
prompt, because the initial login command is reporting an error.
A useful test would be to log in to Mac OS X as a different user, and
see whether Terminal works for that user. If so, the problem is
something specific to the regular user account.
Here is what I would check first. (The following details are almost
identical for Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7. I don't have a 10.4 system
handy to check what Terminal's preferences looked like in that version,
so hopefully you are running 10.5 or later.)
Once Terminal has launched and is showing the window with the "login:
illegal option" error message, click on the Terminal menu (bold in the
menu bar) and choose Preferences.
Under the Startup category, what does "Shells open with" have selected?
It is normally "Default login shell (/usr/bin/login)".
If "Command (complete path)" is selected, the command field may contain
invalid options. Try selecting "Default login shell" instead.
If "Default login shell" was already selected, then the problem may be
configuration of your user account's default shell, which is harder to
fix. A temporary workaround would be to switch to "Command (complete
path)" and set the command field to "/bin/bash" with no additional
options (and without the quotes).
Another possible setting which could be wrong is under the Settings
category, on the Shell tab. Under the Startup heading is a "Run
command:" item. The check box to the left of that is normally unchecked,
and the command field is normally blank.
If all of that looks OK, the next thing to investigate is the hidden
files that Jim mentioned, but you would have to do it using a method
other than Terminal, because it isn't working for this user account.
A good way to examine these files is with the free application
TextWrangler (from Bare Bones Software). It is a plain text editor which
has an option to show hidden files in its Open File dialog.
http://barebones.com/products/textwrangler/
Once you have installed TextWrangler, launch it. You can decide whether
or not to install the command line tools (I did - they make it easier to
use TextWrangler to open files from the command line once you manage to
get Terminal working). You can then go to the File menu, choose Open,
and enable the "Show hidden items" option. Also choose "Everything" from
the Enable popup menu.
Navigate to your home folder (e.g. by pressing Command-Shift-H). If any
of the files that Jim described are there, open them and follow his
instructions.
> .profile
> .login
> .bashrc
> .cshrc
>
> Look at those files and see if the have a line starting with 'T' or
> '-T', since that is the error you are getting.
The problem might also be a line in one of those files which starts with
"login" or "/usr/bin/login", and has a "T" or "-T" later on the same
line. I wouldn't expect a login command to appear at all in these files,
so if it does, I would delete that line and save the file.
--
David Empson
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