Apple security update 2018-002 10.13.6 fails on Mac Pro

Hi,

I tried to install this security update both on my Mac Pro 2013 and MacBook Pro 2017 (both 10.13.6).

Mac Pro 2013: after update reboot I got the account screen; after inserting the password the white line went around the end, then I got the white apple black screen with terminal log (I saved a copy) and reboot/switch off options. No way to enter any account; no way to get this repaired thorughout Recovery Partition.

I solved myself by booting my Mac from an external drive with HS 10.13.6 installed and launching Disk Utility S.O.S. from there on my Mac Pro internal SSD.

MacBook Pro 2017: I launched the update. After rebooting I entered my account normally, but App Store is asking for applying the same security update. It seems that it hasn't been installed. Safer to leave it right now.

AppleCare yesterday told me over the phone that there wasn't any issue about this update...

I finally got this persistent problem fixed (2010 Mac Pro had downloaded but did not install Safari/Security update, then afterwards would not shutdown or reboot normally, had to be turned off from the power button). Reset PRAM, SMC, which did not help. Unplugged peripherals, extra internal and external drives, USB devices and extra PCI cards (USB 3, mSATA drives) -- no help. Safe boot worked, but did not solve the problem. Booting from a USB installation of High Sierra worked fine, and would shutdown normally, but problem continued with normal boot.

1. Forced the software updates via Terminal (sudo softwareupdate -i -a --verbose). Updates (Safari and Security) installed successfully, still did not solve the problem.

2. Reinstalled High Sierra from a USB installer. This also did not solve the problem.

Finally, did the following from Terminal (aka "shotgun approach"):

1. rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/*

2. sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.fra mework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

3. killall Dock

4. sudo mdutil -E /

Success! System shutdown worked normally again. I ended up installing Mojave afterwards anyway, but had wanted to solve the problem first, particularly before doing the required firmware updates (requiring reboots) for my Mac Pro.

Hope this helps anyone else experiencing similar issues.

Update on this. I contacted AppleCare (so glad I got it for this computer since I cannot afford downtime for any reason) and went through a first round with someone who was obviously just checking off trial and error items on a list in front of her. When that was not getting any results, she put me through to the next round with someone who had some expertise in Apple products.

The upshot was that apparently the installer for the Safari 12.0.1 had completed its update but was still remaining as the default volume to boot from. Since the installer had done its job already it was failing, hence the call to the Installer Log program. The tech had me run in Recovery Mode to explicitly set the volume from which to boot going forward and that setting held on the next reboot.

A simple problem in the end but not easy to figure out if you're not seeing things from the perspective needed to diagnose.

Thanks chelidon, your fix worked for me after removing extra space in "framework". Here are my exact steps:

1. rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/*

2. sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.fra mework/Support/lsregister -kill -seed -lint -r -f -v -dump -domain local -domain system -domain user -domain network

3. killall Dock

4. sudo mdutil -E /

5. Reboot

6. sudo softwareupdate -i -a --verbose

7. Reboot when prompted

I had this problem on a MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2012).

I hope Apple is working on an update to the Safari and/or Security Update updates but meanwhile it seems that booting in Recovery Mode and reselecting the startup disk again fixes it.

I've update a bunch of machines so far, ranging from Minis, Airs, Non-Retina and Retina MBPs, and they have all failed on the first install of Security Update 2018-002. The only one that succeeded in one try was a 2014 Mac Mini (The others were 2013 or earlier).

Fortunately, at least in my case, all of them booted successfully after the first install failure, and succeeded to install it on the second attempt. Be aware, these updates take flippin' forever to install, most around half an hour. So, don't get impatient and force a shutdown just because you see a black screen for a few minutes, or a progress bar not move for a while. I was panicking on the first couple because I had promised I'd get the computer back to the user within an hour, and after an hour I was still doing the second attempt on them.

BTW, you can easily tell that the first try failed because there is a "macOS Install Data" folder at the root of the volume.

This fix (removing ~/Library/Caches, running lsregister, killall Dock and mdutil -E /) also worked for. In addition, I decided to take it in stage, first applying the Safari 12.0.1 fix from the App Store, rebooting, and running through all the steps again before running softwareupdate from the command line to apply the security update. The first time I waited several hours for the spotlight database to rebuild after running mdutil, but the second time I just rebooted.

I have a vague feeling I ran into something like this before since I had installed Onyx (and then forgot about it), and it has a maintenance option to rebuild LaunchServices (possibly just a way of invoking lsregister from a GUI). I thought perhaps my apparent hang was just the update automatically performing one or more of these steps but with no feedback, but none of the commands took a long time to run (a minute or two).

I did get lots of -10811 errors from lsregister, but this seems to a warning if lsregister finds something that is not an application but tries to register it anyway.

Yes, same issue. It seems a few people are having this problem on older computers (mine is mid-2014).

I ended up reinstalling OS X in recovery mode (it wouldn't even boot up in safe mode), so it's now working normally. But it wants to download the update again and I'm not falling for that twice. Hopefully they work it out.

I originally posted the problem on reddit, however just crickets over there. I didn't even know it was related to the Security Update until coming here. I thought it was just trying to install Mojave because I have that stupid "Update to MacOS Mojave" notification I can't get rid of.

It seems to be related to the Safari 12.0.1 Security Update. The App Store settings default was to install updates automatically, so it did the Update without my knowledge. From there, it's hitting an unknown road block during the install.

What I discovered when booting from the backup, in the Macintosh HD folder, it had a subfolder called "macOS Install Data". I think it's junk left behind causing the Mac to think it's still in install mode. It's just a presumption because when I trashed it, the Mac was able to restart normally.

After rebooting normally, I got a notification about the Security Update again. I tried installing it. Same thing happened, again. Same log file errors. Rebooted into backup and removed the Install Data folder. It is booting normally.

Definitely, stopped the auto updates on all my computers. I want to make sure I have a current backup before doing any software updates.

As it turns out, I ended up reinstalling OSX 10.13.6 (High Sierra) via the Recovery Drive. I don't know if that includes the latest update that created the problem to begin with. It looks as though I have the all clear, and things are back to normal. THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!

I am using a MacPro 17 (2012), on HighSierra.

After a number of trials, here are the various cleaning actions I ran on Terminal (but I don't know for sure which of these commands really wiped away the problem, it is only affecting caches functions, anyway), please type them in a Terminal session, one-by-one :

1. rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/*
2. rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/*
3. sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/*
4. sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/*
5. atsutil databases -removeUser
6. sudo atsutil databases -remove
7. sudo atsutil server -shutdown
8. sudo atsutil server -ping
9. sudo rm -rf /var/folders/*

After performing the last Terminal command, Restart. If the update is not automatically restarting during the boot, you may need to have it installed via the AppleStore.

In fact, some cache data is preventing the Restart/Shutdown from the Apple Menu to work.

I'm into my 3rd day with no crashes, running OSX 10.13.6 on an iMac Retina, 27", late 2014. The re-install via the Recovery Drive seems to have done the trick, installing the latest version of the software with no additional update required. So far so good. Thank you ALL for your help.

This is what I did (TM Restore), after the 2018-002 security update I fixed the initial boot hang (by selecting 'Macintosh HD' from the utilities menu within the stalled Installer application). However I was then left with the 'macOS Install' folder at Root level and my Mac appeared to be running hotter than what I'd expect to see (both CPU & GPU), therefore I decided to restore from TM to pre 2018-002 update (the first time I've ever had to run a full TM restore).

The restore was fairly painless, I had to do some minor maintenance/relinking with Backblaze/Dropbox/Google Drive. The 'macOS Install' folder disappeared as expected and my system build is now showing as 10.13.6 (17G65), the App Store is also asking me to Install the 2018-002 security update (no thank you!).

Interesting my Mac (iMac 2017 5K) remained running hotter than I would expect, especially coming out of screen saver or sleep. As a temporary fix to this issue I've disabled 'power nap', which so far appears to be working.

I had to wait 20 minutes ion a fast Mc Pro 12 core.

Hi Anthony, my ancestors are from Cork 🙂

Yes it's simply copy and paste the commands in order. Remove the space in the word "framework" (neither chelidon nor I was able to remove it from our posts). The first command that begins with "sudo" is one very long line and will result in a password prompt in the terminal. Type your Mac password, which won't appear as you type, then hit enter. To be clear, the numerals at the beginning of each line are not to be typed - they just make order clear. Also, the word "Reboot" is instruction to you, not to be typed. After the last reboot our problem was 100% solved, and I can see at least three others apparently had good result. I started and ended with High Sierra. I haven't upgraded to Mojave.

Hopefully that works for you. If it does, please be sure to thank chelidon as well because he is the original author of the fix!

For others reading this, the two posts with the fix are at the bottom of page 3 of the comments.