Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!usenet!jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU!go From: go@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Gary Oliver) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Re: nice for Minix? Message-ID: Date: 28 Mar 91 03:19:11 GMT References: <2416@borg.cs.unc.edu> <1991Mar20.221512.21591@vicstoy.UUCP> <1991Mar25.093908.13426@rtf.bt.co.uk> Sender: @lynx.CS.ORST.EDU Organization: Oregon State University, Computer Science Dept Lines: 33 Nntp-Posting-Host: jacobs.cs.orst.edu Just thought I'd put in a good word for the nice "nice" package submitted by Kai-Uwe Bloem recently. It works "nice"ly. But seriously... I pulled the cdifs out and removed the "profiler" code (wasn't sure if it would all run on a PC - it was from a 68K system.) After pruning the profiler defs I just patched it against my "almost" standard 1.5.10 system (1.5.10 with virt-terminals and my shared-text) and it patched almost perfectly. A couple of problems with the .h files involving _PROTOTYPEs that I lobotomized for the purpose of quickly installing... The performance (on my 10Mhz AT with 4meg) is SO MUCH better I am able (right as I type in this note) to run 6 compute-bound jobs without ANY noticable degradation in performance as I type this in to kermit. Terminal output is steady too (at 2400 BPS.) (And these "hogs" aren't even niced!!) I even tried running two "du /" simulatenously and you can still vi, ls, etc without anything other than expected happening - no more 15 second pauses for ls to list a 5 line directory. I'm not certain, but if people would try this, the cry about having a "threaded" fs may die down. The package is a much simpler way to get most of the performance asked for and it is in keeping with the spirit of Minix : simple and effective. It's a pretty classical implementation of process priorities with queue pre-emption and should, at least, be representative of topics discussed in any OS class worth taking. Try it - you'll like it. Gary Oliver go@jacobs.cs.orst.edu