This is on NetBSD/i386 1.3.2, if it matters:

Even if I run the SETI@home client at max nice (20) it still grabs more
CPU than it should. According to the manpage for renice(8) a process at
nice level 20 should only run "when nothing else in the system wants
to".

However, I see this using top(1) to monitor CPU usage:


load averages:  2.48,  1.86,  1.51                              07:10:16
71 processes:  3 running, 67 sleeping, 1 zombie
CPU states:  0.5% user, 99.0% nice,  0.5% system,  0.0% interrupt,  0.0%
idle
Memory: 132M Act 5752K Inact 37M Wired 326M Free 8K Swap K Swap free 

  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE   RES STATE   TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
22284 seti     105   20    13M   14M run     1:27 43.56% 43.55%
setiathome
15164 root     105    5    76M   76M run   110:21 43.16% 43.16% htdig


If I kill the setiathome process the picture looks like this:


load averages:  1.21,  1.53,  1.49                              07:16:33
65 processes:  2 running, 62 sleeping, 1 zombie
CPU states:  0.0% user, 90.1% nice,  2.0% system,  0.0% interrupt,  7.9%
idle
Memory: 114M Act 5936K Inact 37M Wired 344M Free 8K Swap K Swap free 

  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE   RES STATE   TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
15164 root     102    5    76M   76M run   114:42 89.21% 89.21% htdig


So obviously the htdig process "wants to run". I run htdig at nice level
5 to give processes like sendmail and httpd priority, when needed.

What I want to do is to run SETI@home but make sure that htdig gets all
the CPU it needs while it runs, still allowing other processes at "base"
nice level (0) priority over both.

Gunnar

--
Gunnar Helliesen   | Bergen IT Consult AS  | NetBSD/VAX on a uVAX II
Systems Consultant | Bergen, Norway        | '86 Jaguar Sovereign 4.2
gunnar@bitcon.no   | http://www.bitcon.no/ | '73 Mercedes 280 (240D)