Noodlesoft Forums

I have a group of Hazel rules that help me to manage my bill paying routine. Bills PDFs are renamed as they're downloaded, and after I pay them, I drag the PDFs to a folder. There's then a rule that renames the files once again and moves them to various folders for storage. My rules are synced to iCloud for use on other computers.

That "after I pay" rule used to move files into a Dropbox folder. That worked great. Then a few months ago I set up a Synology NAS. I now store all of my files there, so I edited each rule to point to new folders on the NAS. But now my iCloud synced rules seem to lose track of the Synology folder paths when I do my bill paying on another computer. All of the path information is still intact (and looks correct), but each time I have to click through to refresh the folder locations... which kind of defeats the purpose of having those rules in the first place.

Do you get the same result with non-synced rules? Are the paths to the NAS folders identical on each machine?

I don't have any non-synced rules. And yes, the path is identical on both.

I'm trying something:

* On Computer A I created an alias that points to the Synology NAS folder I'd like to use.
* I coped that alias to Computer B and verified that it opened the correct folder on the Synology NAS.
* On Computer A I edited each rule that was failing so that it pointed to the new alias (and then to sub-folders under the aliased folder).

It may take me a month or more to know if it's working, but I'll report back.

^^^ "... a month or more..." Understatement for sure.

To simplify my question: Is there a reliable method for Hazel to move files to a network location -- in this case, onto a Synology device? I've tinkered for months on this and have re-created all my rules to make sure they were pointing to the correct folders on the Synology, but they fail after the computer has been idle for a bit, say overnight. They even fail if I first use Finder to connect to the correct folder.





Log says: Move failed: "Destination folder [blah, blah] is unavailable. Will try again later."

It would seem that the NAS is not maintaining a stable identifier for Hazel to recognize it as the same drive. What are the results with the alias? Does that still resolve properly?

No, that didn't work. And since then I've actually simplified -- just one computer, no cloud based rules, no aliases. Nothing fancy. I'm just trying to get Hazel to consistently "see" the Synology connection.

If Finder aliases don't resolve then there's something definitely wrong with the NAS. Is it being mounted at the same point every time? What protocol are you using to connect to it?

Finder aliases resolve just fine. I thought you were referring to trying to solve this problem with the use of an alias.

So to recap: I have a Synology attached to my network. All computers on the network can see it. I have no difficulty with any file operations that use the Synology.

I have created several rules in Hazel that first rename a file and, after renaming, move those files to various folders on the Synology. The Hazel rules work correctly after initial creation. But after a period of time -- say, overnight -- all of the rules involving the Synology fail. Hazel reports that the destination folder is unavailable. The failure happens even after I've used Finder to browse to the destination folder and before the rules run.

Continuing to troubleshoot.

I was getting ready to pay some bills first thing this AM. I opened Hazel and edited an existing rule. There, as usual, I saw that Hazel considered the "to" location to be invalid: all rules' folders were greyed out. Since all of the receipts' folders share a common parent folder on the Synology, I thought that perhaps editing one of the rules might cause Hazel to recognize the paths for the remaining folders. Although Hazel showed that the path for the newly-edited rule was valid, the others were still greyed out.

Maybe you should email in to support. I may want to cook up a test build with extra logging as it seems the NAS is presenting itself as a new drive each time which can be troubling.

I'll do that. Thanks for your help.