[BUG] Claude Code 2.0.43+ exits immediately after rendering welcome screen on RHEL8

[tmclean-feith]

Preflight Checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

Starting with version 2.0.43, Claude Code's interactive TUI renders the welcome screen but immediately exits with code 0. Non-interactive mode (claude -p) works perfectly.

Debug observations:

• Shell snapshot creation completes successfully
• All initialization completes without errors
• TUI renders correctly
• stdin/stdout/stderr are all TTYs
• claude -p "test" works perfectly
• Issue is specific to interactive TUI event loop

Terminal capabilities confirmed working:

• TERM=xterm-256color
• All terminfo entries present
• stdin/stdout are TTYs
• No environment variable issues

What Should Happen?

TUI should remain interactive and wait for user input.

Error Messages/Logs

None, it fails silently.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install Claude Code 2.0.43 or later on RHEL 8
2. Run claude in any directory
3. Welcome screen appears briefly then process exits immediately

Claude Model

None

Is this a regression?

Yes, this worked in a previous version

Last Working Version

2.0.42

Claude Code Version

2.0.43, 2.0.49 (latest as of this ticket)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

Other Linux

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

No response

[bcjonescbt]

detailed similar issue in #12266

[tomp]

another similar issue is #11864

[bcjonescbt]

This still happening with 2.0.64

[jambolo]

Same behavior for me with 2.0.76 on WSL Ubuntu. One thing to note is that if I type quickly, the input goes to the prompt and claude exits as I am typing.

Linux version 4.4.0-26100-Microsoft (Microsoft@Microsoft.com) (gcc version 5.4.0 (GCC) ) #7309-Microsoft Fri Jan 01 08:00:00 PST 2016

[tim-watcha]

Still experiencing this on v2.1.3 over SSH on Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS (glibc 2.27, zsh shell).

The welcome screen and theme selection menu render, then the process exits immediately (exit code 0). Non-interactive mode works fine. Downgrading to v2.0.42 resolves the issue. I also tested v2.0.43 which fails, confirming the bug was introduced in v2.0.43.

This appears to be related to #12507 (stdin consumption during shell snapshot creation).

[gregfife-cdi]

I ended up debugging this with Claude Code on a Mac before I was aware that the problem was reported. It thinks it found the problem:

Please file an issue at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues with this information:

Title: Claude Code immediately exits on Red Hat 8.10 - stdin removed from epoll event loop

Description:
Environment:

• OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.10 (kernel 4.18.0-553.el8_10.x86_64)
• Terminal: macOS Terminal.app SSH'd to remote system
• SSH_TTY: /dev/pts/1
• TERM: xterm-256color
• Claude Code version: 2.1.5

Issue:
Claude Code displays the welcome screen and theme selection but exits immediately
without accepting keyboard input.

Root Cause:
strace reveals that stdin (fd 0) is added to epoll but immediately deleted:
epoll_ctl(4, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, 0, {events=EPOLLIN|EPOLLHUP|EPOLLONESHOT, ...}) = 0
epoll_ctl(4, EPOLL_CTL_DEL, 0, NULL) = 0

After this, the program never receives keyboard input and exits after internal
timeouts expire.

Reproduction:

1. SSH from macOS to Red Hat 8.10 system
2. Run: ~/.local/bin/claude
3. Tool displays welcome screen but exits immediately

Attached: Full strace output showing the issue

Attach the /tmp/claude_epoll.txt file to the issue.

claude_epoll.txt