Terminal shows "launchctl usage: setenv <key> <value>" on top of every session

Question

Every time I open a Terminal window the following is printed on the top:

launchctl usage: setenv <key> <value>

I figured something must be wrong with my .bash_profile but I could not find anything in there related to "Daemons/Services".

What else could it be?

Answer 1

If the message appears every time you open a terminal, there is probably a problem in one of ~/.bash_profile or /etc/profile. You are probably calling launchctl with wrong parameters. Try searching for the relevant line:

grep launchctl ~/.bash_profile /etc/profile ~/.profile ~/bash_login

That should show you which file is calling launchctl and you can then either remove the offending line or correct it.

bash only reads ~/bash_profile and /etc/profile when launched as a login shell. In OS X, when you open a new terminal, this is the case, whereas in most (if not all) other *nix terminals, an interactive, non-login shell is launched and ~/.bashrc is read instead. See here for more info.