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- Path: sparky!uunet!dove!cam!sims
- From: sims@cam.nist.gov (Jim_Sims_x2710)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
- Subject: Re: Interactive vs Background users
- Message-ID: <9909@fs2.cam.nist.gov>
- Date: 21 Nov 92 01:47:19 GMT
- Organization: National Institute of Standards & Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Lines: 87
-
- Some time ago I was looking for a way to lower the priority of jobs
- that are CPU hogs in order to give interactive control to people
- at the console. I posted to comp.sys.sgi and found out about a company
- called Parallelograms who had created a program on Alliant systems to
- do this automatically. They had done an SGI port and invited me to
- beta-test it and give them my input. I did, and when I asked for
- a way to put the person who is logged in at the "console" in a
- special class by themselves and rig things up so that every
- other job gets pushed into the background, they added that
- capability. We eventually bought their product (Nanny) and have
- been satisfied with it enough to want to give them a plug.
-
- What follows is from Parallograms and is sort of an executive
- summary of the key functions and technical features of the
- currently available Nanny:
-
-
- Nanny is a very general CPU time balancer. Nanny runs as a daemon to
- continuously and automatically watch the CPU behavior of jobs and then
- set their priorities according to whether they appear to be background
- number-crunchers or interactive applications. The priorities are
- entirely configurable by the system manager. Here are some of the
- things that are transparently accomplished using Nanny:
-
- - implement any balance of CPU time distribution between users,
- groups, or departments
-
- - give overriding priority to console users when they are present
- and thus improve interactive response
-
- - monitor the current CPU load or create historical summaries of
- CPU by user, group, or departments
-
- Platforms:
-
- Nanny runs on a variety of popular workstations and parallel
- processors. Additional ports are in progress. The following are
- available:
-
- - Silicon Graphics workstations and multi-processors
- - Hewlett-Packard 9000 700 series
- - Sun SPARC systems
- - Alliant systems
- - Cray (FPS model 500) systems
-
- Configuration and technical features:
-
- To implement many configuration and query functions, Nanny uses
- an embedded command parser called Tcl (Tool Command Language by John
- Ousterhout; see comp.lang.tcl newsgroup for information). Tcl makes
- the data Nanny collects available to other programs. In particular one
- can write scripts that take specific system actions based on data collected
- by Nanny. Tk (an X11 toolkit for Tcl) and the "wish" shell also
- provide X11-based graphical display of data available.
-
- For Perl (by Larry Wall; see comp.lang.perl) enthusiasts the
- socket() function allows Perl writers access to the data collected by
- Nanny. Scripts may then take system actions based on the results. For
- example, either of these tools (wish or perl) could be used to build a
- script that monitors memory intensive jobs and pauses them if they are
- running at inopportune times. A simple example of such a script is
- provided.
-
- Nanny's network capabilities make collecting and acting on
- network-wide detailed load information as simple as writing a single
- script for a master host.
-
- Contact information and pricing:
-
- For additional information, write to:
-
- Parallelograms
- P. O. Box AA
- Pasadena, CA 91102
-
- You may also call or FAX 818 577 5515.
-
- Also, questions can be asked of terry@wag.caltech.edu
-
- Pricing is in the PC software range. Call for more information.
-
- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- NAME: James S. Sims TELE: (301) 975-2710
- USMAIL: National Institute of Standards and Technology
- (formerly National Bureau of Standards) ARPA,BITNET: sims@enh.nist.gov
- Bldg. 225 Room B-146
- Gaithersburg, MD 20899
-