System V process dispatching

[Gary Mills]

The following situation occurs regularly here, and I am just wondering
if it is normal behaviour.  A user has a couple of background processes
running that are using a lot of cpu time.  There are also 20 or more
"auto" processes that are runable, but not doing anything.  (The "auto"
processes are spawned by the distribution list program of our x.400
mail system to notify users of newly arrived mail.  They merely do things
like touching a file or writing a line to the user's terminal.)  If I do
a "nice -4 date &", that process joins the "auto"s.  When I do a "ps",
the user's processes have a nice setting of 24, and the "auto"s and my
"nice -4" have a nice setting of 28.  My shell has a nice setting of 20.
System response appears normal.  After a while, say ten minutes or an
hour, my "nice -4" process completes, and when I do a "ps", all the
"auto"s are gone.


-Gary Mills-                                     <mills at cc.uofm.cdn>
-University of Manitoba-
-Winnipeg, Canada-