Nice value worthless??? / Renice?

[kai at uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu]

> Written by root at spdyne.UUCP
> A few years ago, I was working on a VAX 11/730 running BSD 4.2.  When
> you would nice a process by say 2, you could tell the difference right away.
> Now I'm running a Compaq 386/20, with (sorta slow drives (40ms)),
> and only 3 Meg of ram.  Microport UNIX with DOS-MERGE. (Sys V)
> As far as I can tell, the nice value does absolutly nothing!
> I have been running my makes +19 to allow other things to run and
> I can't even page up/down in VI in under a few seconds.  
> It takes the same amount of time even if I nice -20, so what good does it
> do?

>From what I understand, some PC versions of UNIX are based on Sys V.2,
which didn't page, it only swapped entire processes in or out.  Since
the nice value only affects cpu scheduling, chances are your compiles
are taking up more memory than is left, and your edit is getting swapped out.
Adding memory might help.  If you OS is based on V.2, upgrading to a newer
release might make some difference too.

Patrick Wolfe			pat at kai.com
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