Installed 10.12 Developer preview without problems but Terminal is not working for me. Firing up Terminal gives the follwing messages with no input prompt.
[forkpty: Device not configured]
[Could not create a new process and open a pseudo-tty.]
I did reinstall 10.12 a second time but the problem persists. Any suggestions?
Having the same issue. I've tried
sudo sysctl -w kern.tty.ptmx_max=256... but nothing changed :/
Good to know it's not only me. I've tried trashing preferences but still no result.
Filed a Radar 27054176 just in case this is a bigger problem.
Still only the Dev1 release so I'm expecting more than a few bugs. Surprised how good this release is though!
Terminal has started working for me.
Only chnage I made was to track down what I think is unrelated runaway process GPSOverWiFi which was using 100% of CPU. I renamed then killed the process in /usr/local/bin/GPSOverWiFi to stop it from restarting. That fixed my CPU problem and suddenly Terminal started working. It may be a coincidence but I'm happy now.🙂
GPSOverWifi is a Novatel MiFi device driver. I seem to recall need it to USB tether the device to my MacBook Pro (Late 2013) Retina. I installed mine in 2013, and it's never given me any issues, even after I stop using the device over a year ago. Until two days ago when I installed Sierra (Build 16A323).
What appears to be happening is that the driver is stuck in a loop causing it to open persistent tty sessions until all available sessions are used (as defined in sysctl). It won't make any difference what you set the soft or hard tty caps to because GPSOverWifi will gratuitously eat them all (and refuses to share.)
The issue affects anything that requires a tty shell, such as SSH. So you won't be able to remote into the system. In fact there will be no available ports to connect to.
You can test by renaming and killing the process, as you mentioned above, and openning up a shell. You should now get to a prompt.
If you execute the file from a shell, you'll get the following:
Sep 16 18:39:12 GPSOverWiFi[9288] <Critical>: openpty() error: Device not configured
Sep 16 18:39:12 GPSOverWiFi[9288] <Critical>: openpty() error: Device not configured
Sep 16 18:39:12 GPSOverWiFi[9288] <Critical>: openpty() error: Device not configured
Sep 16 18:39:12 GPSOverWiFi[9288] <Critical>: openpty() error: Device not configured
Sep 16 18:39:12 GPSOverWiFi[9288] <Critical>: openpty() error: Device not configured
Sep 16 18:39:12 GPSOverWiFi[9288] <Critical>: openpty() error: Device not configured
Sep 16 18:39:12 GPSOverWiFi[9288] <Critical>: openpty() error: Device not configured
. . . rinse and repeat . . .
I'm not sure why the app suddenly decided to go rogue (and I probably won't know until after I've reversed it). But it appears that something may have changed in the way that MacOS is handling or configuring tty sessions, or something in the file's decision matrix is not being satisfied thereby throwing it into a loop. Lots of speculation at this point.
Cheers!
Open terminal go to terminal preferences. shell open with:Default login shell
It was one of the first things I tried. Doesn't work. Default shell cannot open because all available shells are in use by the rogue app up to the syctl defined limit.
This seemed to have helped me! Thanks, it was driving me crazy for the last couple months until I got inspired to fix it.
Thank JGG - Same problem here, using same model MacBook Pro... I also looked in System Information at the Sync Services Log and found this repeating hundreds of times:
Nov 28 21:40:26 MyComputerName GPSOverWiFi[52]: openpty() error: Device not configured
Nov 28 21:40:35 --- last message repeated 99 times ---
I think I'm overdue to replace that MiFi anyway.
Saludos!