Git bash Error: Could not fork child process: There are no available terminals (-1)

I have had up to 8 git bash terminals running at the same time before.

Currently I have only 2 up.

I have not seen this error before and I am not understanding what is causing it.

Any help would be appreciated!

Picture attached:

Solution 1:

Found a similar issue and solution in google groups

I opened a windows command prompt and ran the command

$ tasklist

It looks as though the ssh connections I had made in my git bash shells weren't being closed when those windows were closed and were hanging the available git bash shell windows.

This may be a dangerous solution but from the windows command prompt I ran

$ taskkill /F /IM ssh.exe 

Everything appears to be working again after this. It may not have directly been an issue of orphan processes, but this worked for at least for me.

Additional note: you can also kill other processes, for example like:

$ taskkill /F /IM vim.exe

Solution 2:

In my case, it was related with the use of VS code. Previously I have opened VS code using a git bash terminal and executing

code .

then closing the terminal.

The problem is solved by closing all the VS code windows opened.

When you have any editor or IDE configure to open a terminal as git bash, then when the IDE/IDE is running, the git bash will spin up bash from "C:\Windows\System32\bash.exe" and any other attempt to open bash from a separate window is likely to crash.

The best solution is to kill the IDE/Editor bash and open from a new window or continue from the IDE/Editor command.