/etc/and.priorities - priority database for the auto nice daemon.
This manual page documents and.priorities for
and version 1.2.2.
This is the priority database file for
and. It stores (user, group,
command, parent, nicelevels) tuples (hereafter called entries) to determine
the new nice level (or the kill signal, for that matter) when a job reaches
one of the time limits defined in
/etc/and.conf. (See lv1time, lv2time,
and lv3time on the and.conf manual page for details.) See the
affinity
setting in
/etc/and.conf for how ambiguities between the fields (user,
group, command, parent) are dealt with when searching the database to
determine the new nice level for a job. Note that if more than one entry
matches with the same accuracy (e.g. with a parent= entry and an ancestor=
entry), the
last entry wins!
Comments start with a # in the
first column. Empty lines are ignored.
Unlike with other configuration files, lines
cannot be concatenated
with a backslash. Furthermore, this file is
case sensitive.
and allows for host-specific sections in the configuration file. These
work as lines of the form
on somehost and work as follows: the parser
determines if the host name (as returned by gethostname) matches the extended
regular expression that follows the
on keyword. If it does, it just
keeps processing the file as if nothing had happened. If it does not match,
however, everything up to the next
on keyword is skipped. So if you
want to end a host-specific section, you must write
on .* (which
matches all hosts) to switch back to normal.
Don't forget to
kill -HUP the auto nice daemon to enable the changes.
A valid entry consists of a line of six columns, separated by one or more
spaces. These columns are: (in that order)
- user
- The user ID the command is running under. May be a user
name (which will be looked up in the password file and, if enabled, via
NIS), or a numeric user ID, or an asterisk for any user.
- group
- The group ID the command is running under. May be a group
name (which will be looked up in the group file and again, if enabled, via
NIS), or a numeric group ID, or an asterisk for any group.
- command
- The name of the command, without path. May be a command, a
regular expression to match multiple commands, or an asterisk for any
command. Note that "foobar" will not match
"/usr/bin/foobar" - you probably mean ".*foobar" or
even ".*foobar.*".
- parent
- There are two modes of operation for the parent field,
determined by a keyword: parent=foobar will match if a process'
direct parent process matches the command or regular expression after the
equal sign, whereas ancestor=foobar will match if any
ancestor process matches. After the keyword and the equal sign goes the
name of the parent process, without path. May be a command, a regular
expression to match multiple commands, or an asterisk for any command.
(You can just use the asterisk if you want to ignore parents for this
entry.) Note that again "foobar" will not match
"/usr/bin/foobar", as with command.
- nicelevel 1
- The nice level after lv1time CPU time was used by the
command. Positive numbers and 0 are interpreted as nice levels; negative
numbers are interpreted as signals to be sent to the command. A "nice
level" of 19 will almost stop the job, -9 will actually kill it.
(Like in kill -9.) lv1time can be set in /etc/and.conf
- nicelevel 2
- Same but after lv2time.
- nicelevel 3
- Same but after lv3time.
Here are some entries from the real world (i.e. from "my" cluster at
the Institute). As lv[123]time, 5 min., 20 min., and 1 hour is assumed. (Which
is the default. See
/etc/and.conf for details.) You might also check
the default priority database that comes with
and.
# A finer default nice level
* * * * 4 8 12
# User dau is an idiot, so treat him like accordingly
dau * * * 19 19 19
# Netscape sometimes goes berserk, we must stop it
* * netscape * 4 -9 -9
# Most hosts are free for everyone but some are
# especially for the FOO group
* * * * 4 8 12
on (bar|baz)
* * * * 8 12 16
# ... or, more radical: * * * * -9 -9 -9
* foo * * 4 8 12
on .*
# KDE screen savers...
* * .*kss * 16 16 16
# Grid jobs (assuming they are started by a master
# process)
* * * ancestor=grid_master 10 10 10
# Now some clever yet deceitful user might start all
# his jobs using a shell script named grid_master.
# He shall regret... whereas the original grid_master
# (owned by grid) is left alone.
* * grid_master * -9 -9 -9
grid * grid_master * 0 0 0
- /etc/and.priorities
- The priority database (in plain text). Contains the (user,
group, command, nicelevels) tuples. This is what this manual page is
about.
and(8),
and.conf(5),
kill(1),
regex(7),
renice(8)
http://and.sourceforge.net/
The auto nice daemon and this manual page were written by Patrick Schemitz
<
[email protected]>