Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 09:56:33 -0600 From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Question about nice Message-ID: <20041116155632.GD80412@dan.emsphone.com> In-Reply-To: <20041116144450.GA70461@weller-fahy.com> References: <20041116144450.GA70461@weller-fahy.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In the last episode (Nov 16), David J. Weller-Fahy said:
> I've set a very few commands as NOPASSWD in sudo, and run them from
> my normal user's crontab. I've seen some examples of crontab's that
> use nice, but none that use sudo and nice. That led me to a few
> questions. All paths have been stripped stripped - sudo and isoqlog
> are in
> /usr/local/bin, nice is in /usr/bin.
>
> 1. I understand nice is useful if you need to run a program at a
> certain priority. Is nice useful when not passing a priority? If
> so, what is the difference between the following two commands (in
> terms of priority level)?
>
> nice isoqlog
> isoqlog
man nice:
The nice utility runs utility at an altered scheduling priority, by
incrementing its `nice'' value by the specified increment, or a
default value of 10.
> 2. If it is useful to run nice without passing a priority, then are
> the following two commands equivalent? If not, which one would be
> preferred and why?
>
> nice sudo isoqlog
> sudo nice isoqlog
>
> I've been reading a bit, but haven't found a definite answer yet. My
> feeling is that the answer to number one (first portion) is no, and
> thus the answer to number 2 (first portion) is no. I'd be happy to be
> proven wrong, though. ;]
The first may take longer to execute on a busy machine, since sudo
itself is running at a lower priority. The 2nd may be a security
hazard, depending on whether you allowed "nice isoqlog" or just "nice"
(with any command) in your sudo config file.
--
Dan Nelson
dnelson@allantgroup.com
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20041116155632.GD80412>