Re: CCL:Deprioritizing SGI unix runs

[shenkin ( ( at ) ) still3.chem.columbia.edu (Peter Shenkin)]

 > From: <WILLIAMS%XRAY2 ( ( at ) ) ULKYVX.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
 > Date: Thu, 03 Feb 1994 14:21:38 -0500 (EST)
 > Precedence: bulk
 >
 > 	I recall that there was a message over the net about something
 > better than "nice" (which hardly works at all).  Can anyone tell
 me
 > how to keep background jobs from slowing foreground jobs to a
 > crawl?  Thanks.
 "man npri";  example:  (as superuser, unless it's your job):
 	npri -h 150 -p <process-id>
 will give the existing job <process-id> a non-degrading priority of 150.
 High priorities (like high "nice" values) slow the process down.  150
 is
 a good value for background jobs which should never preempt interactive
 work to a significant extent.  In other words, a job with this priority,
 if it's the only user process on the system, will use 99+% of the CPU
 (e.g., at night), but it will use essentially 0% if someone is at the
 console interacting with, say, a molecular graphics program.
 The difference between npri and nice is that npri gives a *non-
 degrading* priority.  "nice" affects the aging of priorities.
 You can also say, "npri -h 150 <jobname> <job_args>" to
 start up a job
 with a non-degrading priority of 150.
 Hope this helps....
 	-P.
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 Peter S. Shenkin, Box 768 Havemeyer Hall, Dept. of Chemistry, Columbia Univ.,
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