From walt {*at*} ibm1.carb.nist.gov Wed Jan 26 09:47:02 1994 Received: from ENH.NIST.GOV for walt*- at -*ibm1.carb.nist.gov by www.ccl.net (8.6.4/930601.1506) id IAA16118; Wed, 26 Jan 1994 08:56:28 -0500 Received: from ibm1.carb.nist.gov by ENH.NIST.GOV (PMDF V4.2-13 #4653) id <01H84SETQCR4000TNV[ AT ]ENH.NIST.GOV>; Wed, 26 Jan 1994 08:56:16 EDT Received: by ibm1.carb.nist.gov (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA17996; Wed, 26 Jan 1994 08:56:43 -0500 Date: Wed, 26 Jan 1994 08:33:28 -0500 (EST) From: "Dr. Walter J. Stevens" Subject: Background Priority To: Chemistry List Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Some time ago I posted a question to the list about executing jobs in the background on SGI and IBM workstations. I was interested in execution priorities that would allow a job to soak-up unused machine cycles without interfering with foreground or higher priority jobs. The 'nice' command doesn't have enough range. Thanks to everyone who responded. We haven't made much progress with with IBM AIX. Here is a summary of the responses: - Use 'npri' on the SGI workstations. eg. npri -h 150 This works pretty well, but I haven't found an equivalent command for IBM AIX. - Use NQS (Network Queuing System) to distribute load and the 'qdel -s' option to stop jobs during the day. This is not quite what we're looking for, since interactive and priority foreground use continue at all hours. - IBM RS/6000s do not timeshare well. This is true. We usually run two jobs max. However, a 'sponge' priority for deep background execution isn't really timesharing. - Try 'Batch 4.0' for SGI which is available from Scott Presnell. Contact him at srp: at :zgi.com. Free for academics and gov. but need license. Docs and man pages available (FTP 128.218.21.42). We haven't tried this yet, but it does have provisions for giving high priority to active console users. Looks interesting. - Try the commercial package 'nanny' from Terry Coley (terry -8 at 8- wag.caltech.edu). This is an automatic priority controller that can give priority to active console users and can also balance the percentage of cycles given to each user. A free trial version is available at ftp.wag.caltech.edu:/pub/nanny. We are evaluating this one. No conclusions so far. -------------------------------------------------- Dr. Walter J. Stevens Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute 9600 Gudelsky Drive Rockville, MD 20850 Phone: (301) 738-6264 FAX : (301) 738-6255 E-MAIL: walt.,at,.ibm1.carb.nist.gov --------------------------------------------------