Typing >console in username box—nothing shows up until cancelled

When I type >console into the username box on the login screen, the computer seems to freeze for a very long time. Then I press ^C^C^C^C^D^C^D^D^D^C^D and eventually the computer unfreezes—but first, it flashes the session contents (showing the login console prompt, in what appears to be the same font as single user mode).

This is a fresh (or close enough) Mavericks install with

• no third-party kernel extensions
• no extra apps but the Yosemite installer (It is the same on Yosemite but I'm not allowed to ask about that :P)

on a Macbook Air, 2012, 10.9.3.

It appears that I'm having a problem very similar to the one in this question … but the console actually shows up for me, as soon as I exit.

Also, I am using the user list then selecting a name and pressing option ⌥+return ↩ but that doesn't seem to matter.

I was able to take a photo of what is going on:

Darwin/BSD (Hostname.local) (console)

login: █username>
Password:**** [IOBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport][SuspendDevice] -- Suspend -- suspendDeviceCallResult = 0x0000 (kIOReturnSuccess) -- 0xf400 ****

Password:
Password:
Login incorrect
login: █D ––that is a control-d

The block characters are cursors.

A session that I could actually log in to (but still not see my typing):

Darwin/BSD (Hostname.local) (console)

login: <username>
Password:
Last login: Tue Jun 24 08:06:36 on console
$ echo hello
hello
$
$
$ **** [IOBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport][SuspendDevice] -- Suspend -- suspendDeviceCallResult = 0x0000 (kIOReturnSuccess) -- 0xf400 ****

$
$ logout
█

Solution 1:

This account is reserved for the graphical log in screen to shutter you to the command line environment / minimal text terminal. It’s not an actual account you can use to log in to the OS, just a signal to switch from one set of processes and interface to another.

That being said, I wonder if something is up and you have an actual account you are loggin in as, and not typing terminal a second time. Can you reproduce this on a clean install on an external USB drive? You might just need to reinstall the OS or examine the system log for errors at the time you try to log in.