Cron lowering nice value of jobs run

[Kevin Walsh]

Does anyone out there know why cron starts up it's subshell(s) at a lower
nice value than cron itself is running at? There also seems to be a difference
in nice value between scripts/processes started via crontab using a cron table
and by "at". The jobs run via the "at" program run with a lower nice value,
and therefore higher priority, than those started from a cron table. Starting
a process in background from a shell script which is run by a cron table seems
to give the highest nice value (to the background process).

I am curious as to why this is done since it does not seem to provide any real
benefits and certainly no performance advantages in an application which makes
considerable use of a cron table for periodic processing.

Thanks, Kevin.
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Kevin Walsh  Computer Sciences Corporation  Piscataway, NJ  08854
..!rutgers.rutgers.edu!cscnj!kevin