Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!uudell!sequoia!rpp386!jfh
From: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: "Nice" or not to "nice" large jobs
Message-ID: <19303@rpp386.cactus.org>
Date: 16 May 91 20:21:17 GMT
References: <3197@sparko.gwu.edu> <1991May16.145927.9815@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II)
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In article <1991May16.145927.9815@casbah.acns.nwu.edu> phil@eecs.nwu.edu (William LeFebvre) writes:
>Tell the user s/he is wrong.
>
>The VAX BSD system (4.1 and 4.2, not sure about 4.3) would automatically
>renice any process that exceeded 10 CPU minutes to a nice of 10.  Note
>that the default for the "nice" command is 4, so it was in a user's best
>interests to use the "nice" command explicitly.

I checked the source for this some time back and noticed that it has a
bug which doesn't cause processes with non-standard nice values to be
reniced.  If you start off with a niceness of 1, after 10 minutes you
stay a 1.  If you start off with a niceness of 0, then you get reniced.

It would make better sense if the code set your nice to 10 after 10
minutes if it was anything less than 10 (but not less than 0, that is.)
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