Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bellcore!porthos!chaucer!rc
From: rc@chaucer.bellcore.com (25815-Richard Casto(I895)p130)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: "Nice" or not to "nice" large jobs
Keywords: scheduling priority nice
Message-ID: <1991May16.155208.918@porthos.cc.bellcore.com>
Date: 16 May 91 15:52:08 GMT
References: <3197@sparko.gwu.edu>
Sender: netnews@porthos.cc.bellcore.com (USENET System Software)
Reply-To: rc@chaucer.bellcore.com (25815-Richard Casto(I895)p130)
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 13

In article <3197@sparko.gwu.edu>, sheryl@seas.gwu.edu (Sheryl Coppenger)
writes:
> 
> Historically (since before I worked here), there was a policy for
> users running large jobs which ran along these lines:
> 
> 	1)  Run them in the background
> 
> 	2)  Start them up with "nice" to lower priority

I am not sure if this is quite what you are looking for, but ksh
has a user-settable option to automatically "nice" background jobs
(set -o bgnice).