Comment 3 for bug 225942

I have the problem also:

if it can help:
After editing the "When the command exits: Hold the terminal open"

you can run this command from an existing gnome-terminal to reproduce the problem:
gnome-terminal -e "ls -altr" (I get the the blinking cursor and no prompt)

if you type

gnome-terminal -x "ls -altr" (I got "There was an error creating the child process for this terminal")

I noticed that editing Preferred Applications has an influence on this behaviour