Re: [RFC][PATCH] O(1) Entitlement Based Scheduler

[Peter Williams <peterw@aurema.com>]

Joachim B Haga wrote:
> Peter Williams <peterw@aurema.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>>>They already do e.g. renice is such a program.
>>>
>>>No one's talking about LOWERING priority here.  You can only DoS
>>>someone else if you can set negative nice values, and non-root
>>>can't do that.
>>
>>Which is why root has to be in control of the mechanism.
> 
> 
> It seems to me that much of this could be solved if the user *were*
> allowed to lower nice values (down to 0).
> 
> Right now the only way I can prioritize between my own processes by
> starting important/timing sensitive programs normally and everything
> else reniced. The problem is that the first category consists of one
> or two programs while the second category is, well, "everything else".
> 
> I would *love* to be able to start the window manager and all children
> at +10 and be able to adjust priorities, from 0 (important user-level)
> to 10 (normal) to 20. Negative values could still be root-only.
> 
> So why shouldn't this be possible? Because a greedy user in a
> multi-user system would just run everything at max prio thus defeating
> the purpose? Sure, that would be annoying but it would have another
> solution ie. an entitlement based scheduler or something.

More importantly it would allow ordinary users to override root's 
settings e.g. if (for whatever reason) the sysadmin decided to renice a 
task to 19 (say) this modification would allow the owner of the task to 
renice it back to zero.  This is the reason that it isn't be allowed.

Peter
-- 
Dr Peter Williams, Chief Scientist                peterw@aurema.com
Aurema Pty Limited                                Tel:+61 2 9698 2322
PO Box 305, Strawberry Hills NSW 2012, Australia  Fax:+61 2 9699 9174
79 Myrtle Street, Chippendale NSW 2008, Australia http://www.aurema.com