Process priorities and X

[SILL D E]

A user on a DG Aviion is complaining that background jobs run by cron
are running at higher priorities than X clients, e.g., ps shows the
server at 20, the background job at 22, and xterm at 24.  Apparently,
this background job is a number cruncher that's been running for a few
days.  Interactive response is, needless to say, negatively impacted
by running at a lower priority than the `batch' job.

My questions are:
    -does the DG, or do SYS V systems in general, have `renice'?
        (the only SYS V machine I have access to, a Cray X-MP, doesn't
        have it, but I don't know if that's typical SYS V.)
    -anyone else seen this behavior on DG's or under X on other
        systems?  (I've never seen it on Suns or DECs, but then I
        don't run heavy-duty background jobs.)
    -aren't long-running jobs automatically nice'd by the kernel?
    -is there any way to boost the priority of X clients at
        invocation-time other than `nice -N xclient...'?

[Comp.unix.question readers: please reply by mail.]

Thanks.

--
Dave Sill (de5 at ornl.gov)
Martin Marietta Energy Systems
Workstation Support