> How can I set a process to have a non-degrading absolute priority, like the
> npri command in IRIX?

Run renice(8) regularly?

A facility to 'fix' a priority might be nice in some situations.  On
the other hand, keeping the scheduler simple and (relatively :-)
predictable is a good thing.

> I understand about 'nice', but this only appears to apply an offset to
> whatever priority the system decides to give a process.

The "niceness" of a process influences it's priority.  It's not as
simple as an offset.  If you want to UTSL sys/kern/kern_synch.c looks
like the place to start.

There is some explanation in the setpriority(2) manual page.

Regards,

Giles