[H-GEN] Priorities

[Sarah Walters]

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On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 11:50:44AM +1000, Robert Stanford wrote:
> What is the logic behind negative nice values having higher priorities
> than positive ones? At first glance it seems a bit backwards, but I'm 
> sure there must be a good (and unknown to me) reason for it.

I believe it is because the higher the value the more "nice" they are -
ie the more they are willing to share the CPU. The reason it goes
negative is twofold. Firstly the process is more "unnice" - ie it is less 
willing to share than normal. Unnice is the opposite of nice, negative 
is the opposite of positive, hence the format.  Secondly, as only a
superuser can lower the nice value, and by default the nice value is 0,
it clearly shows that the superuser set the nice value of the process
when it is negative.

-- 
Mrs Sarah Walters
Systems Group
Information Technology Services
University of Wollongong
Phone: +61 2 4221 3775


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