¿Cómo persisten las sesiones del terminal OS X a través de los reinicios?

El código para restaurar la Terminal (en realidad, las sesiones bash ) es parte de /etc/bashrc_Apple_Terminal que se obtiene a través de /etc/profile y /etc/bashrc para cada sesión bash que se ejecuta en la Terminal.

# Resume Support: Save/Restore Shell State
#
# Terminal assigns each terminal session a unique identifier and
# communicates it via the TERM_SESSION_ID environment variable so that
# programs running in a terminal can save/restore application-specific
# state when quitting and restarting Terminal with Resume enabled.
#
# The following code defines a shell save/restore mechanism. Users can
# add custom state by defining a shell_session_save_user_state function
# that writes restoration commands to the session file at exit. e.g.,
# to save a variable:
#
#   shell_session_save_user_state() { echo MY_VAR="'$MY_VAR'" >> "$SHELL_SESSION_FILE"; }
#
# During shell startup the session file is executed. Old files are
# periodically deleted.
#
# The default behavior arranges to save and restore the bash command
# history independently for each restored terminal session. It also
# merges commands into the global history for new sessions. Because
# of this it is recommended that you set HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE to
# larger values.
#
# You may disable this behavior and share a single history by setting
# SHELL_SESSION_HISTORY to 0. There are some common user customizations
# that arrange to share new commands among running shells by
# manipulating the history at each prompt, and they typically include
# 'shopt -s histappend'; therefore, if the histappend shell option is
# enabled, per-session history is disabled by default. You may
# explicitly enable it by setting SHELL_SESSION_HISTORY to 1.
#
# The implementation of per-session command histories in combination
# with a shared global command history is incompatible with the
# HISTTIMEFORMAT variable--the timestamps are applied inconsistently
# to different parts of the history; therefore, if HISTTIMEFORMAT is
# defined, per-session history is disabled by default.
#
# Note that this uses PROMPT_COMMAND to enable per-session history
# the first time for each new session. If you customize PROMPT_COMMAND
# be sure to include the previous value. e.g.,
#
#   PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }your_code_here"
#
# Otherwise, the per-session history won't take effect until the first
# restore.
#
# The save/restore mechanism is disabled if the following file exists:
#
#   ~/.bash_sessions_disable

Por lo que puedo decir, solo guarda el texto en el búfer de scrollback de cada ventana. En realidad, no guarda el estado de lo que se estaba ejecutando en los terminales; simplemente inicia un nuevo shell después del reinicio.

Como experimento, define una variable en tu shell y comprueba su valor:

foo=bar
echo $foo

Luego reinicie, y verifique nuevamente el valor de la variable. Verás que ya no está definido.