Noodlesoft Forums

I have noticed that after I login to my Leopard account or reboot my computer, Hazel is not running. Once I open the Preference Pane for Hazel, it's fine. I have the setting such that Hazel shows an icon in the menubar.

Hazel isn't the only preference pane that doesn't activate when starting up. I did a search here, but didn't find any matches on the forum here. If I'm the only one to see this, maybe it's not a Leopard thing.

Anyway, I just thought I would bring it up in case this is a new thing.

Thanks,
Dave

What do you mean by not running in this case? Are you observing that rules are not being run? What happens if you do "Run rules now"? How about preview?

You mention the preference pane not activating on start up. The preference pane is just the interface and does not need to be activated for it to run its rules. If you are seeing the menubar icon on login, then the helper process is running and everything should be ok.

So, if you could clarify the above, we can figure out what's going wrong here.

What I am saying is that after I log out of my account, then log back in. When I bring up Activity Monitor and enter 'hazel' into the filter, nothing displays.

When I start System Preferences, then select Hazel, HazelHelper appears in the list.

I currently only have "Enable App Sweep" on right now.

Looking at Accounts->Login Items, I see HazelHelper in the list of items to be started when the account is logged in. However, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Sorry about the terms I use. I'm still kind of wet behind the ears when it comes to OS X and Macintosh.

Let me know if I can give you any other info to help with this.

No problem. Don't be afraid to ask if I'm using terms you don't quite understand. Sometimes I forget not everyone is a programmer.

Is the menubar icon visible when you log in? If it is, then HazelHelper has to be running as it's the process that provides it.

Here's one thing to try: add some other app to your Login Items. Something you know works for sure, like TextEdit or Dictionary. Log out and log back in. If it doesn't start up, then something is wrong with your startup sequence.

Also, check the regular console log. You can view those logs by using the Console application in /Applications/Utilities. See if you see any errors.

I am a programmer, or at least was a few years ago. Just new to the Mac world.

No, the Hazel menubar icon is not visible after logging in. Hence the helper app not showing up in Activity Monitor.

In fact, I just saw something even more interesting. When I went to add TextEdit to the Login Items list, I noticed that HazelHelper wasn't in the list. So I switched to the Hazel Preference Pane, then back to the Accounts Preference pane and low and behold, HazelHelper is now in the list.

What I tried to say before was that until Hazel's preference pane is displayed, Hazel doesn't seem to be running. As soon as I open the preference pane, it's menubar item appears and the helper app appears in Activity Monitor.

I looked at the console logs. The only error I see after logging out and back in is a program called MenuCracker that tells me to ignore the next error message. MenuCracker is used by iStat Menus and GeekTool and others on my system so I do expect that.

iStat Menu's seems to launch fine and so does TextExpander now.

Hopefully, the above new info will be of some help. I haven't seen items in the Login Items appear and disappear like that before. This is really looking more and more like a bug in Leopard.

Yeah, the pref pane will reload the helper if it is down (as well as re-add it to the Login Items). I guess the question is how it's getting removed from the Login Items. Another thing to check is the other apps in the Login Items. Maybe one of them is modifying that list and somehow dropping Hazel from it (maybe a race condition?). You can try disabling different apps to see.

Let me know if it is still happening and if you dig up anything new.

I know what it is...

I have been sync'ing preferences with dot Mac. My MacBook doesn't have half the programs on it that my Mac Pro does. So when it would sync back to the Pro, I would loose some of the items in the Login Items list.

I guess syncing preferences is not such a good idea unless the two computers being sync'ed are running the same programs. :/

Now that I am not syncing preferences, everything seems to be way more stable.

Thanks for putting up with my through this.

Ah, that makes sense. Well, it's good to know about this in case it hits other users in the future. In any case, I'm glad you figured it out.