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Date:      Tue, 8 Jul 2003 11:41:46 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Doug White <dwhite@gumbysoft.com>
To:        Andy Farkas <andyf@speednet.com.au>
Cc:        freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: whats going on with the scheduler?
Message-ID:  <20030708113618.P25140@carver.gumbysoft.com>
In-Reply-To: <20030708215553.F8850-100000@hewey.af.speednet.com.au>
References:  <20030708215553.F8850-100000@hewey.af.speednet.com.au>

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On Tue, 8 Jul 2003, Andy Farkas wrote:

> Any other ideas? Why would 3 (niced) cpu intensive processes suddenly get
> reduced cpu time (on a 4 cpu system) when a 4th non-resource intensive
> process gets started?

Hm.. guess its time to explain how nice works again.

Nice is a relative value.  If you have 2 processes in a system, one with a
lower nice value (== higher "priority") than the other, the lower-niced
process will be scheduled in deference to the higher-niced process.  The
scheduler attempts to ensure that niced processes are not starved.  (In
practice, nice level 20 gets some special treatment.)

If you don't want higher-niced processes to get their cpu time reduced
when a lower-niced process starts doing work, then don't nice them.

I'm sure Terry will pick this to death, buut you get the idea.  I think
the daemon book explains this better than I could (and with infinitely
more detail).

-- 
Doug White                    |  FreeBSD: The Power to Serve
dwhite@gumbysoft.com          |  www.FreeBSD.org



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