Set task priority

[Glen Barber]

Hi Steve

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 7:05 PM, Steve Bertrand <steve at ibctech.ca> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm attempting to "mysqldump" a database on a box that is hovering near
> max CPU and mem usage.
>
> When I run the command, other critical programs fail to respond causing
> an 'outage-like' situation.
>
> Normally, this is a time-of-day task and will run happily later into the
> night, but I want to run it now.
>
> What is the best way to set priority on my task in order to ensure it
> completes as quickly as possible, but does not cause a situation where
> other programs and their children can't respond?
>

You can use nice(1) or renice(1) to set priorities, but I/O and
bandwidth will end up being your bottleneck.

-- 
Glen Barber
http://www.dev-urandom.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/glenjbarber