5-10 second delay when launching Terminal.app in OSX
A couple of days ago my Terminal.app (console) got a really annoying feature. When launching the console or when I created a new tab it got stuck for about 5-10 seconds before I got my prompt.
If you are like me and are spending most of your time in Terminal.app you understand how annoying this is/was.
I tried to rename .profile, .inputrc and evey other startup script I had in my home folder but the problem did not go away.
Then I found an OSX user which had his Terminal crash when started. He solved his problem by cleaning up some OSX systemlogs. So I thought I try the same trick.
The logfiles which he removed where the asl files under /private/var/log/asl/
I read about them here: http://macosx.com/tech-support/can-i-deleteasl-log/24223.html
But I figured I’d just remove them all 
1 | sudo rm -rf /private/var/log/asl/* |
When all asl files where removed my Terminal went back to normal again and I am sooooooo relieved.
This worked for me BUT I do not recommend you to remove anything if you do not know what you are doing!!!
Cheers!
I just wanted to add that this worked for me as well; I had maybe a 5s tops delay, and after this it has dropped to below a second; still not as fast as on my Macbook Pro, but good enough.
Thanks Mathias!
Brian Bibeault
on February 3rd, 2010 at 6:00 pm
Thanks for sharing Brian!
/mathias
Mathias Stjernström
on February 4th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
I just want to put out that this actually fixed a few of the delay problems I was having throughout the system.
Doug
on July 12th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Thanks Doug!
/mathias
Mathias Stjernström
on July 12th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Good stuff. I moved the files vs. removed them (always good to be able to put things back should your actions make the problem worse or create new problems). But clearing out that directory solved the problem.
Fleish
on September 23rd, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Thanks a lot for this post. This also worked for me.
Zach Dennis
on October 2nd, 2010 at 3:13 am