[Discuss] I/O and network niceness?

[Patrick]

What am I walking about?  Well, for example I've noticed that
even when you nice cp, md5sum a huge file, or when a read/write
intensive cron job starts up, the MP3 you're playing suddenly
sounds horrible... unless it happens to be Nine Inch Nails,
Rammstein, Rob Zombie or something like that, in which case
it's a one-off remix.

Anyway, it's not that cp or whatever process is hogging the CPU,
but that it's keeping the hard-drive and the kernel too busy with
its own I/O noise, which prevents the player from reading the
steady stream of data it needs to play smoothly.

That's just one example.  I'm sure you can think of others.

So... is there any way to give one process a higher or lower
read/write priority?



Same question for network stuff; is there a way to prioritize
bandwidth so you can, for example, `squeeze' your web browser's
connection briefly, and check the mail while it's still loading a
page?

Probably not so serious with a faster connection, but over dialup
it's not unusual for one attempted connection to time-out while
another monopolizes all available bandwidth.



Thanks,

Patrick.

-- 
"...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
courtesy detail."