Getting the most for a process.

[Larry Taborek]

>From article <593 at cogent.UUCP>, by doug at cogent.UUCP (Doug Perlich):
> I have recently become interested in having an application program run as fast
> as possible!  (Sound familiar)?
> 
> What I am interested in is how can a program get a higher priority at run time.
> More exactly what other methods are there to get screaming performance out of
> a UNIX machine.
> As I understand it only root can use a negative nice to make a program run
> faster, are there ways of dedicating a processor (w/ or wo/ a multiprocessor)?
> 
> I am mainly interested in a multi-user system.
> 
> It seems to me the answer is no because then every programmer would try this
> in his/her code and the system would halt.
> 
> -Doug.

I used to be the system administrator of a older Unix system (BSD
4.2) and I wanted to get my programs to run faster.  So I went
through the Manual Pages on the Network Demons and removed (commented
out) each demon from the start up scripts rc and rc.local that
were used for network services we wern't using.  Those
that were started had a nice placed on them so that they ran at a
lower priority (we didn't do much networking anyway).  This meant
that a whole host of processes that usually competed pretty
evenly with my stuff for CPU time ether wern't there or were
competing at a disadvantage.  I immediately noticed a speed
increase in 'user' tasks.

Another technique is to run your program in single user mode.
Naturally on a multiuser system running programs in single user
mode is not advantageous, but for large database loads and the
like it does make sense.

If you do have access to the super user login, the nice command
can be used to speed up your program.  If not, perhaps you can
persuade your co workers to nice their programs down.

Programs can be run at night were they do not have to compete
with the resources of the machine with other user processes.

Well, hope this helps...
-- 
Larry Taborek	..!uunet!grebyn!macom1!larry	Centel Federal Systems
		larry at macom1.UUCP		11400 Commerce Park Drive
						Reston, VA 22091-1506
My views do not reflect those of Centel		703-758-7000