Re: what's this "nice" unix thing? I'm a sysadmin...

Chris Schleicher (chrissch@cs.uoregon.edu)
Fri, 23 May 1997 09:43:53 -0700

>Anyone feel like writing up a very formal, polite and educational
>plea/explanation as to HOW niced processes work and why its ok to use left
>over CPU for DESCHALL on systems where you ARE allowed to run 'external'
>programs? This has happened to me on no less than 12 systems
>I've or got friends to run this on.

I don't know enough about the guts of unix scheduling to write one
myself, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing such a document
if some more knowledgeable soul were to write one.

I'd especially like info pertaining to IRIX. I've had no trouble with
the Solaris client, but the IRIX client has been somewhat more reluctant
to relinquish the CPU at times...

>It ONLY gets 60% of the cpu when there is 60% LEFT OVER after everything
>else has got its share [...]

I assume this is supposed to be true of nice()'s everywhere?

--Chris

--
     Chris Schleicher                      Office:  541/346-3998
     Univ of Oregon CIS GTF                email: chrissch@cs.uoregon.edu
                URL: http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/~chrissch/