Mac Terminal - 'pointer being freed was not allocated' error when opening terminal

Question

I get the following message when opening the terminal on mac

Last login: Tue Mar 11 14:33:24 on console login(291,0x7fff78af9310) malloc: *

Answer 1

I had the same problem with my dev machine. After several hours of trying anything other than a reinstall I finally realized that was the only choice. It should have been the FIRST choice. SO EASY!

• Back up the critical data (just in case)
• Enter the recovery mode by pressing cmd+r at start up
• Choose "Reinstall Mac OS X"

That's it. When my computer restarted I was prompted for my Apple ID credentials and then my user loaded like normal, with a working Terminal, even. I didn't need to reinstall / restore anything. The whole process (including the user folder backup) took about 45 min.

Final step, remove all of the sketchy utilities installed trying to fix this without a reinstall.