From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 21 00:30:34 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8461E16A404 for ; Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:30:34 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: from tao.thought.org (dsl231-043-140.sea1.dsl.speakeasy.net [216.231.43.140]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2569C13C46C for ; Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:30:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: from tao.thought.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by tao.thought.org (8.13.8/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l2L0UvPd068110 for ; Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:30:58 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: (from kline@localhost) by tao.thought.org (8.13.8/8.13.1/Submit) id l2L0UuBT068109 for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG; Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:30:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kline) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:30:56 -0800 From: Gary Kline To: FreeBSD Mailing List Message-ID: <20070321003056.GA66954@thought.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i X-Organization: Thought Unlimited. Public service Unix since 1986. X-Of_Interest: Observing twenty years of service to the Unix community Cc: Subject: How-to reprio gcc (by default)? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:30:34 -0000 Guys, This may grab some interest from those running dog-slow servers and using a GUI env. (Gotta fess up and admit it took me a couple years in the late 80's before I would touch Sun's NeWS. Then I got hooked on using multiple xterms; the rest is history.) Unless I'm having severe delusions, by tweaking the NICE priorities on a bunch on std and added binaries, on my 400MHz. Kayak (with gnome-lite), I'm getting good performance. Later this year (or whenever hands can help me rob my junk Kayak's memory) I'll boost the SRAM from 192 to 512MB. That ought to allow me to run even more smoothly. The tuning so far has been done entirely by-hand. One example is setting the sendmail priority from a nice of 0 down to 7. I've nice'd xload down to 20; increased firefox to -17, and so forth. top runs very well niced at 19 with "-s5". And it does keep the 5-second update fairly well. I don't care about knowing what the system is doing every second (or default two seconds). But it's nice to know how things are generally going. ....So now for some questions: I'm thinking of writing a script that, once it know that X is running (and gnome/kde/<> is in the table) will re-nice everything to my tastes. Is there any way of setting things to run at a lower or higher nice value, other than by-hand or by-script? Since I'm not that concerned with having a port built in K minutes or N hours (or M days :-(), can I set gcc down to 5 or 7 or whatever value? Any kernel hackers or *real* sysadmins who can clue me in? If my backup server is still running in a few month, I'll write up an article on "system tuning" and put it on my BSD site. thanks for any/all thoughts, gary -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org www.thought.org Public Service Unix