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EDIT: The update had the Security and Privacy icon (steel home with vault lock), while the last installed update (2017-001) has the High Sierra icon. So may not be 2017-001. Yet this is the last installed update.

So Installed the security update 2017-001 for mac OS X High Sierra on a MacBook Air 13" 2016 and my clipboard is broken now. Update 10.13.1 is installed.
I am admin. It is systemwide (except for GarageBand). The following were tested:

  • reset
  • check the 'V' and cmd button work and use the menu option.
  • echo "hello" | pbcopy; pbpaste
  • disable CopyClip app at start-up
  • enable guest user, log-in as them
  • safe mode
  • killing and pkilling pboard process (sudo too). Actually using paste kills the process anyway (the launch daemon reloads it).
  • freeing HDD memory as it was getting very low. Now 10/256 GB.
  • zapped P-RAM
  • reset SMC
  • removed as many launch agents as possible
  • snooped in /private/tmp

It works in recovery mode —I do not have time machine enabled or the spare memory to backup ATM.

 Launch control status –6

The best lead I have is an abort signal for the launch control:

 $ launchctl list | grep pboard
 1234 -6 com.apple.pboard
 $ id -u
 501
 $ launchctl debug gui/501/com.apple.pboard
 Configuration failed: 150: System integrity Protection is enabled

That is the launch deamon cannot start it (-6). In recovery mode, where it works, the status is 0. System integrity protection was always enabled.
The pasteboard service (pbs) has a normal status. Dragging text works (no idea of what that service is). Another user (see below) has Sys' int' prot' disabled and has a copy paste issue.

Update environment

This section is here solely in the offchance someone has the same problem and happens to have the system similarly configured.
The install of the update was only slightly odd as in it did not ask to reset the machine. After accepting the update request, I proceeded to shut down stuff and Matlab was crashed. The terminal was ssh'ed into a pi and office and pycharm were open.
The previous time the machine crashed was the day before with Kerbal, a videogame that does not really work on an Air.
On the update to HighSierra my Office had the unicode bug, which was fixed by a reinstall. After which all worked fine. My Office 365 was first a pirate version then a legitimate version.
Other Microsoft related stuff are Parallels with Win 10 (untouched in months) and Paragon.
Last launch control tinkering I did was to get a NFC card reader to work. CopyClip is an clipboard extension app.

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  • 1
    I have the same issue after installing security update 2017-001 (with the steel home with vault lock). I reinstalled OS X High Sierra a few times and every time that security update was installed the clipboard was broken. I installed OS X back again without installing that security update and turning automatic updated off and the clipboard (copy/paste)keeps working now. Somethings wrong with that update. Why is there a 2017-001 security update with the high sierra icon and a second one with the vault icon?
    – Gert
    Commented Dec 3, 2017 at 9:21

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

I had a similar situation, though it was caused by a sudden power-down in my case. Copy did not work in any of the apps I tried - viewing clipboard showed it to be empty. Restarting or logging out and logging in did not help. After several hours I stumbled onto an answer, which helped me.

In short, run in Terminal command, which rebuilds a cache of shared system services.

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache

Probably I restarted my Mac after that.

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    BTW, if someone can paste it in discussions.apple.com/thread/7679531?start=15&tstart=0, I will appreciate it. I don't mean my answer, original one will do. I cannot do it because of an error during registration :-)
    – Dmitry
    Commented Dec 3, 2017 at 20:13
  • Thanks it works. What an obscure command! And done the post as requested. I am surprised that the post you linked had a lot of activity: namely most folk went for the Apple forum rather than here, the SO branch for Apple, to me the former seems somewhere elderly relatives with an unplugged computer would go...
    – Matteo Ferla
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 9:30
  • 1
    @MatteoFerla Thanks. My guess is that the most people expect Apple support & engineers to be active in Apple forums. Another possible reason is that it is ranked rather high in search results.
    – Dmitry
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 13:21
  • I had this strange problem where copy and paste worked on all apps except in Windows programs (emulated in CrossOver), Your solution worked like a charm.
    – Vahid Amiri
    Commented Feb 14, 2018 at 2:29
0

I have the same problem exactly, but on performing sudo launchctl debug gui/501/com.apple.pboard I got the following output Service configured for next launch.

UPDATE:

I accidentally stumbled on potentially-temporary-yet-really-cumbersome workaround: I decided I'd had enough, backed up to Time Machine, restarted into Recovery mode. Then I reinstalled Mac OS X. Then I realized that I didn't really want to deal with a new install, so I thought: OK, I'll try restoring from backup and see what happens. So I restored that last Time Machine backup I performed before booting into recovery mode. Been running for the past 30 minutes with no copy/paste hiccups. Will report back in a few days either way. Reinstall of Mac OS X is (most) likely unnecessary, but I thought I'd report what I did anyway.

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6
  • This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. You can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question once you have enough reputation. - From Review
    – fsb
    Commented Dec 2, 2017 at 22:15
  • Actually, it does partially, it shows that System Integrity Protection is not the cause of the problem. Plus it reminds me why it popped into my the problem, because I wanted to debug the launch of pboard. What does the debug output say?
    – Matteo Ferla
    Commented Dec 2, 2017 at 22:21
  • 1
    @MatteoFerla - these kinds of things should be addressed as a comment. Unless an answer either a) solves the problem, or b) states and proves that the problem is unsolvable. Everything else belongs in the comments.
    – jacksonwelsh
    Commented Dec 3, 2017 at 3:32
  • Sorry about that @fsb. I rarely use stackexchange. I was facing this problem after the security update and hit answer without noticing how I was interacting with the site.
    – Reem Mokhtar
    Commented Dec 3, 2017 at 3:56
  • Here is a positive (though it might be temporary, I'll report back in a few days) accidentally-stumbling workaround: I decided I'd had enough, backed up to Time Machine, restarted into Recovery mode. Then I reinstalled Mac OS X. Then I realized that I didn't really want to deal with a new install, so I thought: OK, I'll try restoring from backup and see what happens. So I restored that last Time Machine backup I performed before booting into recovery mode. Been running for the past 30 minutes with no copy/paste hiccups. Will report back in a few days either way. @MatteoFerla
    – Reem Mokhtar
    Commented Dec 3, 2017 at 3:57

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