Subject: Re: Nice and not so nice
To: Gunnar Helliesen <gunnar@bitcon.no>
From: David Brownlee <abs@anim.dreamworks.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/19/1999 22:56:41
	I believe Ross fixed this between 1.3 and 1.4 (at the same time as
	cleaning up some serious alpha related scheduler problems).

	If you could update to 1.4.1 (which should be announced within a
	few days all being equal), and confirm if you still see it... :)

	If you do still see it under 1.4, please submit a PR!

		David/absolute

                  -=-  "Maybe god will cover up his eyes"  -=-

On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Gunnar Helliesen wrote:

> This is on NetBSD/i386 1.3.2, if it matters:
> 
> Even if I run the SETI@home client at max nice (20) it still grabs more
> CPU than it should. According to the manpage for renice(8) a process at
> nice level 20 should only run "when nothing else in the system wants
> to".
> 
> However, I see this using top(1) to monitor CPU usage:
> 
> 
> load averages:  2.48,  1.86,  1.51                              07:10:16
> 71 processes:  3 running, 67 sleeping, 1 zombie
> CPU states:  0.5% user, 99.0% nice,  0.5% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0%
> idle
> Memory: 132M Act 5752K Inact 37M Wired 326M Free 8K Swap K Swap free 
> 
>   PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE   RES STATE   TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
> 22284 seti     105   20    13M   14M run     1:27 43.56% 43.55%
> setiathome
> 15164 root     105    5    76M   76M run   110:21 43.16% 43.16% htdig
> 
> 
> If I kill the setiathome process the picture looks like this:
> 
> 
> load averages:  1.21,  1.53,  1.49                              07:16:33
> 65 processes:  2 running, 62 sleeping, 1 zombie
> CPU states:  0.0% user, 90.1% nice,  2.0% system,  0.0% interrupt,  7.9%
> idle
> Memory: 114M Act 5936K Inact 37M Wired 344M Free 8K Swap K Swap free 
> 
>   PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE   RES STATE   TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
> 15164 root     102    5    76M   76M run   114:42 89.21% 89.21% htdig
> 
> 
> So obviously the htdig process "wants to run". I run htdig at nice level
> 5 to give processes like sendmail and httpd priority, when needed.
> 
> What I want to do is to run SETI@home but make sure that htdig gets all
> the CPU it needs while it runs, still allowing other processes at "base"
> nice level (0) priority over both.
> 
> Gunnar
> 
> --
> Gunnar Helliesen   | Bergen IT Consult AS  | NetBSD/VAX on a uVAX II
> Systems Consultant | Bergen, Norway        | '86 Jaguar Sovereign 4.2
> gunnar@bitcon.no   | http://www.bitcon.no/ | '73 Mercedes 280 (240D)
>