Pyspark: Exception: Java gateway process exited before sending the driver its port number

I'm trying to run pyspark on my macbook air. When i try starting it up I get the error:

Exception: Java gateway process exited before sending the driver its port number

when sc = SparkContext() is being called upon startup. I have tried running the following commands:

./bin/pyspark
./bin/spark-shell
export PYSPARK_SUBMIT_ARGS="--master local[2] pyspark-shell"

with no avail. I have also looked here:

Spark + Python - Java gateway process exited before sending the driver its port number?

but the question has never been answered. Please help! Thanks.

from Pyspark: Exception: Java gateway process exited before sending the driver its port number