What the hell is this?? "The default interactive shell is now..."

Just attempted to fire up Logic Pro, latest version, and got this strange dialog box. "The default interactive shell is now zsh. To update your account to use zsh, please run..." then a whole load of terminal commands. Then the terminal seemed to open itself and run a whole load of stuff. It also asked me if I wanted to allow terminal access to the microphone.

 

What on earth is all this stuff? Should I be worried. Logic 10.7 has been running absolutely fine on Big Sur for weeks then suddenly this???

I would ignore it if it only shows up once.

If it's annoying, try this:

 

https://www.addictivetips.com/mac-os/hide-default-interactive-shell-is-now-zsh-in-terminal-on-macos/

OK, thanks very much, at least I know it's not something scary happening. It begs the question why this has suddenly popped up, though. I presume it has something to do with switching to Big Sur, which I did about a month ago, although the link you provided suggest this should have happened when I switched to Catalina? However, the current project now seems to be crashing on startup since this all happened. I suspect it might be an Acustica plugin as other projects seem to work. Is there anything specific this ZSH thing might affect in Logic 10.7?

I think the Zsh is just for people that use Terminal a lot.

Apparently it changed at Catalina from the old bash shell.

I think it's irrelevant for Logic purposes.

 

And Logic crashing is usually related to some 3rd party plugin that is not playing nice.

OK, thanks. I'll carry on trying to get this project to work. It wouldn't even open with Core Audio off so I think something has corrupted it during the Bash/Console thing.

Well this project seems to be dead. Can't even open a backup from yesterday. Tried several different timed backups but crashes Logic completely every time, with and without Core Audio enabled. Any suggestions what I can try to get it back to life? I've been working on it all week, not added any new plugins for a couple of days. Have to point the finger at the Bash/Terminal thing corrupting it somehow this afternoon.

When Safari (or Mail, etc.) crashes on my machine and I click on the 'Reopen' button the restarted process pops open the Terminal window - the 'zsh' warning has been happening since Catalina. The reopen with Terminal window is a new behavior in Big Sur.

Aha! Thanks for that, very interesting.

Meanwhile I've been able to rescue the data from the corrupted one via the file Browser in a new/clean project, which I didn't even know you could do, thankyou YouTube and Music Tech Help Guy. Just mentioning it here in case this helps someone else with a corrupted project.

This happened again and, bingo, another totally corrupted project. Very annoying. Haven't been near Terminal, just popped up with the same popups as before.

I think the best way to explain this is to say that having a terminal window pop up is just an epiphenomenon of the crash. And as has been explained before, the zsh message is an important one but really only for programmers/developers and others who tend you use terminal for unix/linux-style interaction with their system. For example if you installed some new command line utilities - say to connect to a Firebase or Heroku cloud project and you needed to add some new executable to your system's $PATH env variable, this would be managed differently in zsh than it was in the long-time bash terminal shell.

 

None of that matters for your case - But I think it's safe to say that your seeing the Terminal window isn't the cause of your crashes and corrupt files. It's a side effect. But it does seem that you have some problem indeed.

 

By the way, there are several 3rd party plugins that will run scripts in terminal when you authorize them for the first time. For example, I just purchased a few Sonimus plugins. And their authorization routines do exactly this. You run the "authorizer" script that downloads with the plugin and it creates/edits a few hidden files with hashed keys etc. buried somewhere in your user's Library directory which result in the plugin being authorized. So it's not like there is never an "interaction" between the concept of audio software and Terminal - not to mention the fact that some people unethically and illegally will use Terminal to find and delete hidden files that allow plugin time-limited demos to run and then expire - thereby extending demo periods indefinitely. Shitty to do that.

It's very odd and frustrating to have to build a new project but at least it's doable.

 

What's the best way to discover why a project is failing to open/is corrupted etc?

There are various keys that you can hold while opening a project to have logic open it in "safe modes" - for example, without any 3rd party plugins etc. Look here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203231

I have a few more thoughts. I just watched the video you referred to. One thing I've found in the past is that that method sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't work. If the original project is really corrupted, then I usually can't really open anything to import it. Logic crashes just the same as if I were trying to open the project regularly. Note that in this case you can still right-click the .logicx project form the finder and choose "show package contents." Then you can drill down and manually at least extract any audio you want. It's not ideal but you can at least save your audio. I've gone further at times actually stealing and editing the .plist files and other resource files from the old project as well. But these are desperate measures.

 

But the point is really that if you are able to import your tracks and content the way the Music Tech Help guy's video demonstrates, then I wonder if your project is really "corrupt." Is it possible that you are having problems with a particular 3rd party AU?

 

I'll give you an example: Since switching to an M1 mac last January, I've had several project suddenly just refuse to open and crash logic. I don't know if you are on an Apple Silicon machine or not. But if you are, there are known problems with plugins that aren't M1 compatible yet, are running under Rosetta translation and particularly use iLok with a particular type of iLok authorization. In my case, Synthogy Ivory is always the culprit. 9/10 times if Logic is in M1 native mode, any project that has Ivory or even HAS had Ivory instantiated will crash logic like this when I try to open it. If I try enough times, it will indeed open. Sometimes that's 3 times, sometimes it's 20 times. Also note that the plugin passes AU eval perfectly in Logic. Logic has no idea (because the problem is actually with iLok) that there is a problem. Again, even if the plugin is removed - the fact that the project ever had it instantiated is enough to cause this behavior. Which sucks. But that's not the point.

 

I wonder if something like this isn't happening to you. Again, it's more likely if you have an M1 Mac in my opinion although 3rd party plugins have been crashing Logic since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

It’s certainly odd as Logic has been absolutely rock solid until now with all the plugins I use. I’ve rescanned them all too. And I’m not on M1. And when you reimport the data with the same plugins it runs fine.

I am a computer programmer who uses "the terminal window" on a very regular basis, and I never bothered to switch from "bash" to "zsh" because it doesn't matter to me. Eventually the prompt went away. Yeah, "z" has some nice additional features, but only a programmer-geek would care (and, this one didn't). Both shells are functionally the same for everything that actually matters – and none of it ought to matter at all to Logic musicians. To the extent that you ever do interact with a command-line shell, it really doesn't matter which one you're using ... as if you even knew.

"Eventually the prompt went away." Good to know, thanks.

So true. I did switch for no particular reason. But of course, when you do, you have to be aware that z doesn't run ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile by default when it loads. So move all your environment configs to .zprofile which i still keep forgetting. PITA. I should have stayed.