Head usage unknown option -1 / -n error. Possibly ruby related

Question

I have a recurring problem when starting the terminal in OSX 10.9.1.

Every time I start the terminal I get the following repeated at least 30 times

Unknown option: 1
Usage: head [-options] <url>...
-m <method>   use method for the request (default is 'HEAD')
-f            make request even if head believes method is illegal
-b <base>     Use the specified URL as base
-t <timeout>  Set timeout value
-i <time>     Set the If-Modified-Since header on the request
-c <conttype> use this content-type for POST, PUT, CHECKIN
-a            Use text mode for content I/O
-p <proxyurl> use this as a proxy
-P            don't load proxy settings from environment
-H <header>   send this HTTP header (you can specify several)

-u            Display method and URL before any response
-U            Display request headers (implies -u)
-s            Display response status code
-S            Display response status chain
-e            Display response headers
-d            Do not display content
-o <format>   Process HTML content in various ways

-v            Show program version
-h            Print this message

-x            Extra debugging output

followed finally by

/usr/local/bin/rbenv: fork: Resource temporarily unavailable
/usr/local/bin/rbenv: line 63: rbenv---version: command not found
/usr/local/bin/rbenv: line 63: rbenv-help: command not found

and this repeated 50ish times

/usr/local/bin/rbenv: line 63: rbenv---version: command not found
/usr/local/bin/rbenv: line 63: rbenv-help: command not found

Figuring it's Ruby related, I tried

rvm get stable

and

curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

but then get the error:

SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate in certificate chain

I've also tried repairing permissions (as usual) with no solution (as usual)

This isn't an area I'm familiar with so I not sure which tree to bark up now. Can anyone help?

Here are the .bashrc and .bash_profile contents as requested

.bashrc contents:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.rvm/bin # Add RVM to PATH for scripting

.bash_profile contents:

# Setting PATH for Python 2.7
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/Users/stevekirkby/.rvm/bin
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/Users/stevekirkby/.rvm/bin
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/mysql/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.rvm/bin
export PATH="/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(rbenv init -)"

[[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" # Load RVM into a shell session *as a function*

alias htdocs='cd /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/htdocs'
alias home='cd /Users/stevekirkby'

Thanks, Steve

Answer 1

I had exactly the same problem. It stems from rbenv trying to use head -1 in one of it's scripts, but failing.

The problem is that your (and my for that matter) .bash_profile contains:

export PATH="/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin:$PATH"

And the /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin folder contains a script named HEAD (named after the HTTP method) and a case-insensitive file system in conjunction with bash (as ZSH did not have this problem) gets head and HEAD mixed up and serves whichever comes first in $PATHb.

As a solution:

• either remove /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin from your $PATH (or move it last)
• Or, as I did, mv HEAD HTTP_HEAD in that folder.

PS. the latter option might break some XAMPP scripts but I still need correct XAMPP php version in my path.

Answer 2

Solved by using

rvm implode

to remove the ruby version manager

Then followed the instructions at the end of the uninstaller removing references to rvm in the .bashrc, .bash_profile and .zshrc in my username folder.