Terminal login hangs

I have a strange issue on my new MacBook Pro (late-2016, touch bar).

It works fine and then, after using it for a while, opening new Terminal windows doesn't work because login hangs. Rebooting fixes the problem.

This seems to be an issue some other people have had so I tried all of their solutions already (from 1 and [2]):

Removing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist
Setting my default shell to another shell (from /bin/zsh to /bin/sh or /bin/bash)
Removing or cleaning my .profile, .zprofile, ... This does not work and I can validate that the issue occurs before the shell is even invoked, because if I echo HEY as the first line of my .zshenv this is not even reached. It must be login causing the troubles. Editing /etc/profile to add an echo at the top also shows up nothing
Changing the Run command: setting in my Terminal config to something like echo foo also does not work (leaving Run inside shell checked or unchecked doesn't change anything).

Other notes:

Like [2], ssh-add -K does not persist keys between reboots, something I never had troubles with before.
The console does not show any suspicious errors or warnings.
Opening a new Terminal window does seem to create tty file (/dev/ttys<number>).
When this occurs, it does not matter if I use Terminal.app or iTerm.app
I have a pretty clean install (just got my laptop, didn't restore any backups, just installed some apps with brew install and brew cask install).

This is really hard to debug because I cannot reproduce it and often I can't open a new terminal to even try to find out what's going on.

Does anyone have any tips?

Update:

Using iTerm, I was able to get a shell by setting the start command to /bin/bash. In this shell, however, sudo does not work. It hangs (without showing the prompt) and ctrl-C and ctrl-D do no work when it hangs.

Using some other programs also does not work in this shell: node or /usr/local/bin/node both hang. As far as I can tell, it's programs that are in/usr/local/bin.

Update 2:

brew list --full-name results in these packages:

autoconf
automake
blueutil
boost
cabal-install
cairo
cfssl
cmake
coreutils
doxygen
editorconfig
erlang
ffind
ffmpeg
flow
fontconfig
fontforge
freetype
gdbm
gettext
ghc
git
glib
go
gobject-introspection
graphicsmagick
harfbuzz
haskell-stack
highlight
icu4c
influxdb
jemalloc
jpeg
keybase
lame
libevent
libffi
libpng
libtermkey
libtiff
libtool
libuv
libvterm
libxml2
lua
mongodb
msgpack
nginx
node
openssl
[email protected]
pango
pcre
pixman
pkg-config
postgresql
protobuf
python
python3
rabbitmq
readline
reattach-to-user-namespace
redis
sqlite
the_silver_searcher
thefuck
tmux
unibilium
unixodbc
wxmac
x264
xvid
xz
yarn
z
zsh
josegonzalez/php/php54
neovim/neovim/neovim

Update 3:

These points are in correspondence with @Monomeeth's answer:

When it happens, a login item does show up in activity monitor. (Force) Quitting it also closes the Terminal window that was hanging. Closing the window manually does not make the login process go away in the Activity Monitor.
The terminal title is Terminal — login — term big — ttys001 — 89x18 — ⌘1, where term big is the settings name.
There's no sudo process showing up in the Activity Monitor. I can create a sudo process by opening iTerm.app (which uses bash) and running sudo echo ok there. It can not be Quit, but Force Quit works and kills it:

bash-3.2$ sudo echo ok Killed: 9

Update 4:

When it happens, running login from a shell that's still available does work, while the login in newer shells seems to hang.

Update 5:

I recently got a new laptop (MacBook Pro 2017, no Touch Bar) and the problem persists.

I've switched shells as well: I'm now using fish with a pretty vanilla config. I think that rules out the shell as the culprit.

The OS has also been updated to 10.13.3 (17D47) High Sierra.

I've tried to install as little as possible on this machine:

brew list —-full-names

coreutils 8.29
dnsmasq 2.78
faac 1.29.9.2
fdk-aac 0.1.5
ffmpeg 3.4.1
fish 2.7.1
freetype 2.9
gdbm 1.14.1_1
gettext 0.19.8.1
git 2.16.1
highlight 3.42
htop 2.0.2_2
icu4c 60.2
imagemagick 7.0.7-22
jemalloc 5.0.1
jpeg 9b
lame 3.100
libav 12.2
libogg 1.3.3
libpng 1.6.34
libtermkey 0.20
libtiff 4.0.9_1
libtool 2.4.6_1
libuv 1.19.1
libvorbis 1.3.5_1
libvpx 1.7.0
libvterm 681
libyaml 0.1.7
lua 5.3.4_2
luajit 2.0.5
mongodb 3.6.2
msgpack 2.1.5
neovim 0.2.2
node 9.5.0
openssl 1.0.2n
opus 1.2.1
parallel 20180122
pcre 8.41
pcre2 10.30
postgresql 10.2
python 2.7.14_3
python3 3.6.4_2
readline 7.0.3_1
ripgrep 0.7.1
ruby 2.5.0
sqlite 3.22.0
the_silver_searcher 2.1.0
thefuck 3.25_1
unibilium 1.2.1
x264 r2795
xvid 1.3.5
xz 5.2.3
youtube-dl 2018.02.08

Not sure what this can be now. The only apps which I can think of are Divvy or Apptivate since they both seem outdated. This is the intersection of what was installed on the old vs the new machine:

coreutils
ffmpeg
freetype
gdbm
gettext
git
highlight
icu4c
jemalloc
jpeg
lame
libpng
libtermkey
libtiff
libtool
libuv
libvterm
lua
mongodb
msgpack
node
openssl
pcre
postgresql
python
python3
readline
sqlite
the_silver_searcher
thefuck
unibilium
x264
xvid
xz

Update 6:

Also, here's a screenshot:

Update 7:

My env typically looks like this:

Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.k60Nf5UBfq/Render
DISPLAY=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.6FMoWPSlJI/org.macosforge.xquartz:0
EDITOR=env VIRTUAL_ENV= nvim -u /Users/john-doe/.config/vim/vimrc -p
GNUTERM=X11
HOME=/Users/romeo
HOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI=1
HOMEBREW_PREFIX=/usr/local
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LESS=-RI
LESSHISTFILE=-
LOGNAME=romeo
LS_COLORS=di=00;31:ex=00;37:mi=00;41;30:tw=00;33
MANPATH=/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnuman
PAGER=less
PATH=/Users/john-doe/.config/fisherman/re-search:/usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin:/usr/local/opt/ruby/bin:/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin
PWD=/Users/romeo
SECURITYSESSIONID=186a8
SHELL=/usr/local/bin/fish
SHLVL=1
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.fQn5sHMuZP/Listeners
TERM=xterm-256color
TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=400
TERM_SESSION_ID=D2AF7A50-8B41-4793-9201-8304A02C9B29
TMPDIR=/var/folders/15/zcyyfw_x7638z7vfg5zd85z40000gn/T/
USER=romeo
XDG_CACHE_HOME=/Users/john-doe/.cache
XDG_CONFIG_HOME=/Users/john-doe/.config
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0

As I'm sure you know, troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires a fair bit of patience. I'd like to try a few things to try and get to the bottom of this for you.

1. Confirm it hangs during login

If the process it's hanging at is really during login, this implies that the process is still waiting to create a login session. Assuming this is the case, then it wouldn't have tried to start the shell yet.

To confirm this, the next time you experience this issue launch Activity Monitor to check if the shell is running or whether you only see a login process.

Once you've had a chance to do this, report back with what you found.

NOTE:- If you happen to have other terminals open, make sure you're checking the corresponding process. My guess is that the hanging process is the one with the highest Process ID (PID) number.

2. What is the Terminal title?

The next time you have this issue can you take a note of what the title of the Terminal window is and report back?

3. Kill sudo

You state that rebooting your MBP always resolves this issue.

However, the next time you have this issue (maybe after doing what I described at 1 above), I'd like you to try killing sudo from Activity Monitor.

Once you've tried this, let us know what happens.

4. Try moving your .bash* files

It is possible (for various reasons) you may have a .bash_profile file in your user directory and this is causing intermittent problems. This is something you may not even be aware of, but you can use Automator to run a script that finds and moves any .bash files.

Here is an example script for doing this:

cd ~

mkdir moved
for F in .bash*
do
    mv $F moved
done

This script moves all files starting with .bash in your home folder to a newly created moved subfolder.

After running the script, check this folder and let us know if in fact you have any files in it.

NOTE:- You can label the new subfolder anything you want. To do so, just change the two occurrences of moved in the script to whatever label you'd like to use.

[UPDATE]

Some more things to try.

5. Try clearing the *.asl files

If you haven't already, try clearing out the *.asl files. To do this use the following:

sudo rm -rf /private/var/log/asl/*.asl

NOTE:- This may take some time as it creates a new shell. When complete, make sure you fully quit the Terminal for the changes to take affect.

6. Safe Mode

Do you notice any difference in behaviour when you start your MBP in Safe Mode? To boot into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Once your MBP starts up try using Terminal and see if you can still replicate the issue?
When finished, you can exit Safe Mode by restarting your MBP as normal

7. Open Directory

This probably doesn't apply in your case since you don't mention it, but if you're connected to an Open Directory network this could also be causing you problems. Usually this would only entail waiting for about 10 - 15 seconds, but I have seen reports of terminal logins taking five or more minutes to complete in this situation.

This seems like a perfect fit for you exceeding the maximum processes per user (or possibly max processes).

On a stock macOS installation you get 709 per user (ulimit -u) and 1064 max processes (sysctl -a | grep maxp)

An easy way to bump these up is to install Server.app from the App Store and then reboot. You can also set performance mode for higher limits.

Since you didn't describe your setup (OS version and build), here are some tips - be sure to check for SIP restricting your ability to change files if you read some of the older articles on changing the limits without resorting to installing server.app:

How do I increase "ulimit -u" (max user processes)?
http://blog.dekstroza.io/ulimit-shenanigans-on-osx-el-capitan/
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT3854
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4022
https://serverfault.com/questions/15564/where-are-the-default-ulimits-specified-on-os-x-10-5

I have also been seeing this for several months now. Extremely frustrating. Only thing that fixes it is reboot.

Mid 2015 MBP (no touch bar)
MacOS 10.12.6 beta

Sometimes the login hangs happen after interacting with tmux.

I have unsuccessfully tried all the recommended approaches.

Not sure if it's related, but a lsof -p LOGIN_PID shows a pretty massive file /private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64h for the hung login process.

8/29/2017 Update:

Still having the issue. Sometimes when the machine gets in the bad state, I have open terminal windows that are already logged in successfully that I can use to debug.

Many commands do not run properly, but they all show a pattern of having trouble writing (to stdout, I am thinking). For example, when I run ls -al, I see ls: write error emitted to stderr. When I run ls -al > /dev/null, nothing is printed to stderr.