Copy/Paste Weirdness
 

Copy and paste functions are not working when I'm working within Terminal, Mail, Mozilla and TextEdit. In fact the paste function in the drop down menu remains grey, indicating that it is not available. The same functions work fine in Quark.

Needless to say this is a serious problem for me.

Has anyone come across this before or know of a solution for it?

I'm using 10.2.6.

Help would be much appreciated,

at

Classic?
 

Your mention of Quark makes me think that perhaps (checks date - yep) that you are using Classic.
Perhaps your problems are with copy & paste between Classic and regular OS X.
I think I recall hearing about such problems - have a search around on these forums, the regualr macosxhints site, and www.macintouch.com

No, Quark is running in OS X 10.2.6 as well (I don't use Classic at all anymore).

new version of Quark?
 

Please confirm that this is the new version of Quark that you are running - i.e. the one that is "native" to OS X and which only started shipping a day or so ago.

Yes this is Quark Express 6 functioning natively in OS X.

experiment
 

Okay - so all of your apps are native to OS X.

Please try this experiment and report back here:
Go into Terminal, select some text, choose "Copy" from the Edit menu.
Go into Finder, choose "Show Clipboard" from the Edit menu. What does it show you?

So I copied some text from terminal but when I look at the clipboard it's not there. There is just some old text. When I hit "paste" in a new text document there is no response, ie even this old text that's sitting there on the clipboard does not appear.

Mighty Srange
 

1) Does the Behavior persist through a reboot

2) If 1 is true, You could try a safe boot with Shift Key held down, this will Disco most of the Adds On (analgous too, but different from what was extensions and Control panels in the olden days of 9.

3) I know we have all been pretty crystal about actually going to the Menu where you see Cut, Copy, Paste etc.

But just in case: Do you spend any time at PCs (because of work, I Jump back and forth all the time and Find myself) .. ekkk.... Doing Ctrol. C Instead if Apple C. , etc. There are Util on both side fence where you could force the mappings, but I prefer to remember that I am a Mac User:)

4) If you do not make any progress you will have to do an Archive and Install of X,
You can use the option that preserves user settings etc. This will preserve all your Data, It will even preserve most of your Applicatons, passwords and other settings.

You will need to reinstall Printers, ReUpdate to 10.26, Install any Custom Drivers aka if you have a special mouse. It only takes around 30 minutes. *** This does not count the preverbial did you back up warning. The operation I suggest is very Safe, and yet it is your Data not mine. Hence, the preverbial warning.

more experiments
 

This is strange indeed. I echo the comments from anthlover about using the Copy & Paste from the Edit menu instead of the keyboard shortcuts just so we are sure what is being done.

Here's another experiment that might tell us something:
1) Copy some text in TextEdit
2) Check TextEdit's "Edit" menu to see if Paste is enabled.
3) Open a Terminal window. Check Terminal's Edit menu to see if Paste is enabled. Do the paste back into Terminal if it is.
Check that the text appeared in your Terminal window.
4) If any part of step 3 failed, try typing
pbpaste
in your Terminal window. What does that say?

is the process "pbs" (pasteboard server) running?
any messages in the logs germane to the matter?

First sorry for my delay in getting back to you all but I had problems accessing the forum.

mervTormel:

------
when I run
pb ax | grep pbs I get:
343 con- Z 0:00.00 (pbs)
(there is no path to a pbs file listed)
--------

Running process viewer the reading that I get on PBS is as follows:
pbs root zombie 0.00 0.00
..... is this the explanation?

-------

What logs should I check to gather useful info on this process?

More in a moment after a reboot.

The other posters can help you trouble shoot further it is interesting
 

The other posters can help you trouble shoot further,a nd it is interesting...

I believe however, you will need to do a Archive and Install with user settings.

well, before you just shrug and reinstall (by whatever method), let's investigate why the pbs process became a zombie. it might be a singular snafu, or indicative of a deeper problem.

examine the process table for the pbs process, and examine the log at /var/log/system.log

Okay, first to deal with an earlier suggested experiment.

1. When I copy text from TextEdit the paste option is grey - disabled.
2. When i open the terminal and check the edit menu, paste appears enabled.
3. When I actually try and paste nopthing appears.
4. When I type pbpaste in terminal I receive zero response.

--------------

Under profiler I have a crash log for PBS - what should I be looking for?

I include the first few lines as it's rather long and as we all know, I can't C & P ......

Command: pbs
PID: 343

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000000

Thread 0:
#0 0x90073c48 in mach_msg_trap
#1 0x90005f90 in mach_msg
....
....
....
etc

Thread 1 Crashed
.....
......
.....

PPC Thread State
....
.....
..
etc.

-------
By the way, and excuse my ignorance, but is there further salient information that can be gleaned from the system log at /var/log/system.log that isn't in the crash log?

restart
 

It might be helpful to get some more info from that crash log. The relevant part is the thread that crashed. And check in /var/log/system.log for any messages relating to the pasteboard server: pbs.

But it doesn't seem like you have tried restarting your machine to see if the problem persists past a restart. You should do so now. The logs will still be there and it will be a lot easier if you can cut & paste from them.

can you copy/stuff/send me the crash log and the system.log?

mervtormel@macosxhints.com

aim: mervtormel

Unfortunately I'm away from my Jaguar disks at the moment and won't be back with them until wednesday. I can CAT the system log for you from terminal, but when I examine the CrashReporter directory I can't actually see a file relating to pbs. There is another "???.crash.log" which I can CAT, and will send to you.
-------
While I'm at it I may as well ask :
Am I going to have proplems with GPG and X11 migration when I do the archive and reinstall?
------
Thanks for all your help. I guess I'll be sticking around a bit now that I've found the site.

restart?
 

You found a crash log for pbs using System Profiler before. So I think it must be there somewhere.

And have you tried restarting your Mac yet?
I would do that before bothering with much more of this. It will tell us a lot if 'pbs' crashes at startup. And if it doesn't then you can do copy & paste of the documents! (e.g. from System Profiler)

Well I tried restartiong on numerous occasions but no joy. PBS shows no signs of resurrection and crashes each time on startup.

I mailed the crash and system logs to merv.

Roll on wednesday and reunification with my disks.....

Thanks for all your help. I feel wiser if not yet repaired ;-)

Any advice with regard to X11 and archive and reinstall?

pbs crashes on start...
fwd logs to hayne.

long shot
 

This is a long shot, but could you please try restarting without any CDs in the drive?
Because of where the 'pbs' process is crashing, I suspect a possible problem with CDs that have colons (:) in their names.

Super Sleuth if True anyway......
 

There are two Archive and Install Options
There are two Archive and Install Options, with and with out saving Apps and Users Prefs.

They both Take Your OSX Folder the ("System") Folder and Make it into a Previous one.

If you choose to Save your Settings It will Save you from user setup where you assign passwords, It will save you from having to Drag things from your Applcaitons Folder to your new one, It will preserve your Desktop, Your Dock etc.

You will have to recreate printers and repatch the OS back to 10.26 etc. and counting, reinstall any custom drivers e.g. Carbon Copy Cloner, If you have any special non apple mice etc. You will have to reinstall Palm to make HotSync work correctly, but your data will still be there.

It is super fast compared to not saving your user settings.

As always it would be irresponsible if did not tell you to back up your data "just in case" somthing unlikely happend or human error like you do a Format install etc.

I had dozens of Applications work with Zero modification. And a few that required reinstall to work correctly. What ever X11 Installs in the Applications Folder will be preserved. That Said I do no use X11 ** I suspect stongly what ever hooks it puts into the system will be terminated e.g. if it puts anything in Startup actions or the actual system folder.

Hayne, I tried rebooting on numerous occasions without and CDs in the drive but without success.

Anthlover, thanks a lot for the info on Archive and Install.

cheers to you all,
at

I've just done an archive and reinstall and the problem remains. :-((

Any other suggestions?

I'm perplexed. Running the process monitor the pbs process still comes up as zombie and the copy and paste problem remains the same.

can you show us the results of the shell command:

and:

[edit: readability -mt] [which failed]

troubleshooting
 

Ok, lets go slowly and figure this thing out.
Let's start with standard troubleshooting procedures.
1) Does the problem occur when you log in as a different (preferably freshly created) user?
2) Does the problem occur when you remove all third-party hardware (e.g. mice, speakers, printers, etc)?
3) Does the problem occur when you remove all third-party software that modifies system-wide functionality (e.g. Unsanity haxies, menubar additions, etc)?
4) Does the problem occur when you restart holding down the Shift key ("Safe boot")?
5) Does the problem occur if you disable all login items (software that runs at login) and startup items that you have installed (e.g. databases, etc)?
6) Does the problem occur if you disable all Sharing (via the System Preferences panel)?
7) Does the problem occur if you disconnect your machine from the network and restart (after disabling any connect-at-startup software)?
8) Does the problem correlate with use of a particular application? Restart, run that one application, check if problem occurs. Quit that application, start another, check if probelm occurs, ... You will obviously have Finder running as well, but the idea is to have your machine as minimal as possible.

In your particular case, the issue seems to be that 'pbs' is dying for some reason, so you don't need to check if you can do copy & paste - just check if 'pbs' is running (with Process Viewer or 'ps' in Terminal).

regrets. i forget you are copy/paste challenged.

would you consider creating an account that we could remote ssh into to examine some things?

Wow weirder still When you ran Archive and Install did you save user settings
 

Wow weirder still When you ran Archive and Install did you save user settings???
---------------------------------------------------------------
Did you try copy and paste before Patching to 10.26 and such.....
------------------------------------------------

You may have do the more Violent: Do not Save user Settings Archive and Install.

------------------------------------------------

You will have to personally move things from the Previous System folder Desktop and Applications folder, Redrag things to the Doc etc. Some Apps insert Crap into the System and user folders, those Apps will require a reinstall e.g. Photoshop 7, but not office
-----------------------------------------------

A really Virgin Archive Has to solve your problem as it is close you can come to Formatting your drive and starting over with out actually doing so.
---------------------------------------------

This is good time any any to ask if you have external firewire drive or similar that you can use with Carbon Copy Cloner to not only make mirror image backups, but to allow to make multiple different clones of your system.....

You can merely make multiple back ups (bootable) (read historical with all your apps and data) with different snapshot lags to allow you to roll back to different time frames or you can have a main Back up clone and one you use for trying out all the hacks and crap with out fear, and of course one of the Paritions can be for Data only if you want too.
-----------------------------------------

I wanted to point out that the two basic methodologies here:

1) Trying to unscramble your system conflict or corruption OR
2) Archive and install are at there heart the same thing takeling the problem though from opposite ends. They both work: Almost 100 percent of the time, ****from Scratch is the faster repair methodology. And as admins we are so busy we always want speed. You litterally can futz for days.

******************** And yet you have a very generous benifactor whom wants to help you uncover the root cause so

***************************as to allow you and others avoid it in the future.

If a problem is time critical and you have access to that firewire Drive or an extra drive in your system (i forgot which cpu) **********you can actually conduct both methodologies. Clone your system, as you should have been backing up anyway.

Then on the Cloned version of the system you can try to find the root cause and on your Virginized system you can get back to work.

Good Luck

first understand, then act
 

Even if your system is really screwed up (as is possibly the case here), it is always a better idea to understand what caused the problem before you reinstall. Otherwise there is a lilkelihood that the problem will reoccur. Many problems are due to something (hardware or software) that the user has installed on the system and so a reinstall of the system followed by a reinstall of all the other stuff that was there before will just reintroduce the problem.

ps wwax1 etc
Produces no response at all

-------
-I set up a fresh test account and the problem recurs
-I turned off sharing and problem recurs
-There is no thrid party hardware that could be attached so that can't be the root of it.
- The problem occurs irrespective of whether I'm connected to a network or not
- I've disable my lanuch at start up items and it still occurs
- the problem is there from the beginning and the only applications that allows me to cut and paste is Quark (text) and photoshop (graphics). I assume this si because they have their own clipboards. Is it possible for them to clash with PBS?

------
anyway I'll do the rest of the checks more carefully later but am feeling a bit aggravated now, so it's time to go and have a swim and relax. :-)

applications
 

It is theoretically possible (although unlikely) for their own clipboards to cause pbs to crash. But since you said the problem is there from the beginning, I assume that it has nothing to do with those apps since they were not running when the problem occurs (after a restart of your machine).

P.S. When you go through the list of things to check, it would be good if you reported exactly what you did so we can understand the situation more precisely. E.g. "I disabled my Startup Items by going into the folder XXX and doing YYY and then I restarted the machine. Immediately after restart (when the only app running was Finder), I checked 'pbs' by using Process Viewer and it was listed there as a zombie."

At least you have a Pool, I live on a concrete Jungle known as Manhattan
 

At least you have a Pool, I live on a concrete Jungle known as Manhattan

the letter l (ell), not the number one (1)

in the crash logs you sent, there's this business about filesystempaths...
wonder if there are some funny chars in your paths.

could you rename the drive partitions to something very plain like blue, and green?

hayne, i do believe that quark and PS roll their own clipboards. they also probably attempt to post to pbs. i wonder if there are any interesting PS/quark messages to examine in the logs.

funny characters
 

Yes - good idea. But before you try renaming your hard drives (or drive partitions), tell us what they are currently named. Do they have any non-ASCII characters in their names? What about the names of the folders that you are working in? Do they have any non-ASCII characters in their names?

Yes - but he said that the problem occurs before he runs Quark or PhotoShop.

I realise that the above is difficult to read but doesn't it indicate that at's boot drive is 98% full and the secondary drive (Powerbook G4 Software) is 99% full? I would have thought that such a radically small amount of free space could well be the culprit here. If not, it certainly wont be helping matters.

good eye, dave.

Ok, now that's confirmed :D

at, you need to free up some space on your boot drive. There was a thread discussing this recently but I got a little lost in the technicalities so ... I'll leave Merv to suggest how much space you should free up.

disk space
 

Good point.
The boot drive seems to have about 650 MB available. (Or 900 MB if you include the 250 MB that the system is reserving for emergencies.)
This is indeed minimal and might cause problems. Although I wouldn't expect to see problems right after startup, before doing anything that might use swap space.
Still, it might be a good idea to try to clean up and make a bit more space available.