Re: Command line option to set niceness

[Aaron Paetznick]

I use something like "... | nice -n -100 parallel nice -n 200 cmd". 
This ensures parallel itself is run with a high priority and it's 
children are run with a low priority.  I use this type of arrangement as 
a cron job to compress backup files on a busy server.


--Aaron


On 11/15/2010 10:33 AM, Rhys Ulerich wrote:
> Would it be possible to add a command line option, say -n, to cause
> parallel to spawn processes with a modified niceness?  Possibly
> feeding -n with no option would be equivalent to prepending the
> command with nice(1) and -n [#] would adjust the priority per
> nice(1)'s page.
>
> Admittedly, the user can simply use nice wherever desired.  My
> interest is for having $PARALLEL or the configuration file pick this
> up automagically.  That way I don't bring my UI to a grinding halt
> whenever GNU parallel's doing it's thing.
>
> Thanks,
> Rhys