Problem: I'm running desqview under linux on a laptop.  No matter what
my hogthreshold setting is and how much I nice the dosemu job itself,
the dos app. desqview takes away all idle cpu.  Since I use a laptop,
this means that my fan turns on and my battery runs down about twice
as fast when I have the dos job sitting in a background window.
Ideally, there should be a way to halt the dosemu job when it's not in
foreground.  Windows already has this feature built in.

Proposed solution: Make 4 entries on the hogthreshold line in the
dosemu.conf file.

Old format: 

$_hogthreshold = (200)  # 0 == all CPU power to DOSEMU

Proposed format:

$_hogthreshold_fg = (10)  #0=all CPU power to foreground  DOSEMU,100=no power
$_hogthreshold_bg = (100) #0=all CPU power to background DOSEMU,100=no power
$_hogthreshold_fg_nice = (0) #niceness of DOSEMU job when running in foreground
$_hogthreshold_bg_nice = (20) #niceness of DOSEMU job when running in b.ground

There would be 4 numbers governing cpu usage of dosemu.  Two for cpu
usage based on keyboard idle interrupt polls (foreground & background
job states) and two for the niceness that this job should run at when
in these two states (useful for programs like desqview).  Note also
that I am suggesting is a _linear_ scale that has a value which
implies zero cpu usage, which is currently incompatible with the
hogthreshold even for well-behaved dos programs.

Scott, Andi, are you willing to implement this?  Any other volunteers?
Do you think this is a worthwhile idea?

Jason Taylor
--
Jason A. Taylor                         
NASA/GSFC Code 661                      
Greenbelt, MD  20771 (USA)              
Phone:(301)286-4945/Fax:(301)286-1682   

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