Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 25th Oct 2007 07:57 UTC, submitted by JohnnyUtah
The Completely Fair Scheduler was merged for the 2.6.23 kernel. One CFS feature which did not get in, though, was the group scheduling facility. Group scheduling makes the CFS fairness algorithm operate in a hierarchical fashion: processes are divided into groups, and, within each group, processes are scheduled fairly against one another. At the higher level, each group as a whole is given a fair share of the processor. The grouping of processes is done in user space in a highly flexible manner; the control groups (formerly 'process containers') mechanism allows a management daemon to classify processes according to almost any policy.
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RE: grouping for functions
by Ford Prefect on Thu 25th Oct 2007 13:06
in reply to "grouping for functions"
Member since:2006-01-16
First, system daemons could/should be niced already if needed.
Next, your user side usecase lacks substance. GUI processes that are minimized or on other desktop are usually sleeping anyways. If they are not, for example a music player or a cd burning application, it could even be fatal to give them bad priority.
It's not as easy as it looks. On earlier Windows versions (don't know the current ones) you could give a hint to the scheduler: Equal rights for every process or priority given to the current "foreground app". I always chose the former...
RE[2]: grouping for functions
by evert on Thu 25th Oct 2007 15:22
in reply to "RE: grouping for functions"
Member since:2005-07-06
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Further development of this functionality would enable sysadmins to assign higher priority to certain groups of processes who must always be very responsive, like a "webserver" group, including both the (my)sql database part and the httpd part.
For users, it would be possible to give lower priority to all processes that are running in the background (minimized or on another screen) at once. This could even be automated by a window manager and would result in a more responsive desktop.