System Services in Automator won’t start

automatorservices

For about a week it occurs that System Services created in Automator suddenly refuse to work.

It happens on all Services, system-wide, i.e.:

Open in Marked in Byword
Create Symlink in Finder
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I'm not able to reproduce it, the only solution right now is to restart my Mac. System Services will work for a certain time and suddenly they will stop working again.

It also doesn't depend on the trigger. Via menu, via shortcut or via iCal, everything fails.

No output in Console.App.

Any ideas?

Best Answer

You could try running "Disk Utility.app", manually, and try to do the following:

Repair permissions.
Verify or repair disk.

If that doesn't work, you could try to narrow it down by starting from another volume with a different copy of the System Software.

That's worth a try I think.

Related Solutions

Location of services created in Automator

As others have said, services are normally in one of the Library/Services folders (~/Library/Services, /Library/Services, and /System/Library/Services). If just looking there doesn't turn it up, another option is to spy on what files are being opened when you invoke the service, with something like:

sudo opensnoop -n WorkflowService

... and then running the service, and looking through the results to see if you can spot the relevant file. If it isn't an Automator-based service, you might have to leave off the -n WorkflowService (although you'll have a lot more irrelevant files to sort through because you'll be seeing every file anything in the entire OS opens).

ICloud for Automator and services

You can save services anywhere, not just iCloud or the correct Service location. Because of this, I used to save services in my Dropbox and symlink them on multiple Macs. With the advent of iCloud, I use this instead, saving my services in iCloud then symlinking them on multiple machines.

Also, iCloud in Automator is not just for services — it'll sync all the Automator files, including workflows and applications.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Location of services created in Automator

ICloud for Automator and services

Related Question