I'm experimenting a little with Automator at the moment and often get stuck with some pre-recorded automation running very slowly while the whole Mac (an 2010 iMac in my case) doesn't respond to any input – either by keyboard or mouse.
For now I connect via SSH from another machine and issue a killall Automator
to get controls back.
Is there any solution available which enables me to halt / freeze a Mac and issue commands using a terminal?
Best Answer
You could also run a "deadman's switch" app: have a script (maybe an Applescript) running when you start the Automator testing. After five minutes (or however long the Automator setup should take), it should display a dialog asking if you have control back this dialog would have a timeout (of 30 seconds or so), after which, it would try to kill the Automator process.
Example code:
(Note that this code, instead of killing Automator, kills a random process. This is probably not a good idea, but I'm not sure exactly what you need to kill, and I thought it'd be fun. I've not actually tested that particular bit of code.)