[Nottingham] Opportunistically maximising resource utilisation

[Charles Samuels]

Martin wrote, on Tuesday 2008 September 23:
> So...
>
> What might be the best strategy for an unprivileged low priority
> application to sense and opportunistically utilise spare resource such
> as idle CPU time and spare RAM and yet avoid (causing) excessive memory
> swaps or a system slow-down in any way?
>
> That is, how can you make a big resource hog really really nice and
> unobtrusive for whatever system?

Charles pops in once in a while...

Check out the command "ionice". However, I find that it doesn't work. I don't 
know if affects swap use. Only root can run it (even if you're reducing your 
priority), and child processes don't inherit their ioniceness.

In short: it sucks, but maybe it'll work for you, but I doubt it.

Charles