Re: [RFD] 'nice' attribute for executable files

Lee Revell
2005-03-29T21:02:27Z

On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 21:55 +0200, Wiktor wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> recently i had to run some program (xmms) with lowered nice value as
> normal user. to do that i had to su to the root account and then execute
> nice --5 xmms.

Let me guess, the sound skips unless you run at a low nice value.
That's bad design on the part of XMMS.

nice is the wrong way to handle RT constraints. You need a proper
design (ie multithreaded).

See JACK for an example of how to do it right.

http://jackit.sf.net

Or, since you don't need low latency, use a bigger buffer.

Proper handling of RT constraints has been discussed to death on LKML
and other lists (executive summary: almost no one does it right.
mplayer is one of the most egregious offenders).

Lee