Another hazelworker process is processing folder ...

Hi,
I have about 30 different active folders.
Sometimes there are lot of files to be processed the same time.
When this happens, performance is going down and I can find al lot of entries in the log like this

2015-09-28 09:11:09.093 hazelworker[12583] Another hazelworker process is processing folder with identifier 754974723-5252022258-0. Exiting.

There are a lot of entries like this, but normally with only two different identifiers.

How can I find out which folders in finder cause these entries ?
What does this entry mean, what´s wrong with these folders or rules ?
Are these problems the reason for the bad performance ?

Thanks,
grafwetter

Those messages aren't a problem. It just means that something triggered Hazel but it was already processing the folder in question at the time. If you are having performance issues, it's probably because you have Hazel doing too much. First off, can you elaborate on why you have so many folders? Are they subfolders of a common folder and if so, have you looked into consolidating your rules?

Mr_Noodle,
you were right.
I had too much processes at the same time. I can´t reduce the number of folders, but I wrote same scripts to make Hazel to process folders one after another.
As I have such a lot of different folders it now happens that Hazel needs a long time to execute rules on some of these folders.
Is it possible to priorize some folders in running the rules on them ?
Maybe as a "run rules" command within an applescript or shell script of the prior folder-rule ?

No way to prioritize. Not sure what you mean in your last sentence. Can you elaborate?

you have this useful applescipt function:

Code: Select all: tell application "Finder" set posix_parent_dir to POSIX path of (container of (item theFile) as text) end tell return {hazelSwitchFile:posix_parent_dir}

I thought about something similar,
but to invoke subsequent processing of any defined hazel-hotfolder and its rules.

You can trigger processing in another folder by doing something like using the "touch" command in a shellscript. You can set up a special file in that folder just for that purpose.

I am also getting this error, but without any rules showing any sign of actually being processed. Restarting has not helped. Any advice on how to fix this would be much appreciated.

Note that this is not an error in and of itself. Can you elaborate on the real problem you are seeing?

Thanks for the swift reply.

The problem is that I have a folder set up to do a bunch of things to the files in it (unzip if a zip, unpack attachments if .eml or .msg, and then any resulting PDFs get straightened, OCRd and moved to another folder). This usually chugs along quite happily, but nothing is presently happening to the many .eml, .msg and .pdf files sitting in it. I have tried touching files (which produces the error message), forcing a run of the rules, stopping and starting Hazel, to no avail. Also turned off the most recently added rule (the one processing zip files) to see if that helped. Also nothing happening.

Try the preview. That message does not indicate an error but if you are forcing it to run and nothing happens, it may be because your rule logic isn't correct. Using the preview function should help in this regard.

The preview shows a large number of files with rules matched against them. Some have a badge on the icon indicating a possible problem, but (without having checked all of them) it just appears to be a potential-duplicate warning.

If I empty the folder and put in a PDF file (the rules for which I have not changed since things stopped working), it is shown as matched in preview but the rule does not run. If I force the rule to run I get the "Another hazel worker process …" message in the console.

Try rebooting and see if things work after that. Also, check for long running Hazel processes. There may be some issue like a loop. In such a case, I suggest emailing the logs.