Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!seibel
From: seibel@cgl.ucsf.edu (George Seibel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: "Deep Background" applications
Message-ID: <11019@cgl.ucsf.EDU>
Date: 25 Jun 88 23:14:13 GMT
References: <649@necis.UUCP> <29500025@urbsdc>
Sender: daemon@cgl.ucsf.edu
Reply-To: seibel@hegel.mmwb.ucsf.edu.UUCP (George Seibel)
Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
Lines: 20

In article <29500025@urbsdc> aglew@urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM writes:
]
][buncha stuff about Gould RT unix]
]
]Finally, may I say that Real Time UNIX features are useful for 
]more than Real Time applications? For example, fixed priority
]scheduling - there have been many times that I wanted to have
]a "deep background" application, that would run only when the
]system is otherwise idle. No matter how much you nice, your
]process will still take some cycles away when the system isn't
]idle.

Boy, would that be nice.  We have a job mix that includes a healthy
fraction of multi-day cpu burners.  We'd really like a way to make
those jobs butt out when someone wants to run a short (10 min-1 hr)
job.   Does anyone know of an easy way to do something like this on
a bsd 4.[2-3] system?

George Seibel, UCSF
seibel@cgl.ucsf.edu