Bash prompt doesn't print until I interact with console again

Solution 1:

My guess is that this is a bug either in gnome-terminal (I assume that's the terminal you're using), or the graphics / desktop subsystems, or some interaction between them. Is it actual keyboard input that triggers the appearance of the missing line, or does scrolling down e.g. with the mouse wheel do it? I've seen bugs like that before in g-t, the last one I think was to do with switching or creating tabs.

Examples of similarly reported previous bugs:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/881014 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=695412

I would suggest trying with a different terminal program (e.g. xterm), and perhaps using a different window manager or desktop environment (e.g. swap between unity and unity-2d), or graphics driver (e.g. swap between nouveau and the nvidia proprietary driver.) Actually chasing the bug in gnome-terminal down and getting it fixed is probably not very likely, sadly.

I very much doubt missing packages are the cause.