Folder Action Start up - beach ball of death

Question

The subject says it all.  I can't turn on folder actions because it always ends like this.  Does this work for anyone?

Answer 1

Are these Folder Actions ones that you have created, or the standard actions provided by the system? Automator saves Folder Actions that you create as workflows (packages) stored here with normal permissions and user/group ownership as you. If you tried to roll your own outside of Automator, it may be the source of your problems, whether by location or permissions, or more bad luck.
homedir/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions/
Here is what works via example:
I wrote a UNIX Bash shell script that converted specific types of files based on their extension into html files. This script also called on AppleScript to show an alert dialog listing the illegal files (if any) that were also detected. I wanted to attach this script to a Desktop folder so that I could drag and drop n-files for conversion.
I launched Automator and chose Folder Action. Then I choose Utilities > Run Shell Script. Dragged the latter onto the Automator workspace to the right. The settings for this action looked like the following (click to enlarge):
At the top you see the folder that I will attach the action too. And on the right, I chose input as arguments, because my shell script is reading from its command line.
The full shell script is pasted into the action. The normal shell shebang invocation is removed under these circumstances. Then you tell Automator to save the Folder Action, and exit automator.
Now, you right-click on the target folder, and at the bottom of the menu, is the Folder Actions Setup...
For mine, this is what the dialog should look like.
The Actions folder is irrelevant as it is a test folder for actions. I called my Desktop folder - file2html, and the Folder Action that Automator saved, was called file2html.workflow.
And here is the shell script that went into the folder action: