On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 16:40, Christopher Sawtell wrote:
> su -
> Password: secretblah
> nohup nice 18 emerge --update package 2&1> ~/emerge.log &
> logout
>
> The update will now take place in the backgound at a very low
> priority, and probably won't even be noticed.
Really? I would imagine that downloading many MB of data would not be
very CPU intensive, so altering the "nice" level would not have a
dramatic affect on the performance of the machine.
The kids problem is this, if I understand correctly:
1. "emerge" is scheduled.
2. "emerge" requests a heap of data from the server.
3. The kernel puts "emerge" into interruptible-sleep state (D)
until the data has arrived.
4. The pipe fills with data coming in from the server.
5. No...bandwidth...left...for...UT. Much...lag. Getting...
fragged...lots...damn...you...Dad!
Altering the "nice" level only affects how frequently (1) occurs, while
the real problem is (4), which still happens far too frequently for the
kids to be happy.
There is a solution to their problem. I think it is called "bandwidth
shaping" but I am not too sure of its name or how to do it\ldots
--
Michael JasonSmith http://www.ldots.org/
