Quote:
Originally Posted by
matthewfs
Does the definition mean you can only set the nice value if you have Linux 2.6.12 or higher?
I'm sure process priority has been a feature of Linux for much longer than that.
The way it's traditionally worked, though, is that any user can
lower their own priority. If you want to create processes of higher priority, you need root access -- partly because you don't want self-important software(or users!) clogging your machine with high-priority processes, partly because ignorantly running things at extremely high priority can be dangerous -- making user mode software higher priority than, say, an interrupt handler would be a Very Bad Thing.
This 2.6.12 feature apparently allows users to
raise their own priority without root access, if granted by the system limits file. What's new is this feature in the config file, not process priority itself.
It looks like a good feature to me. There are occasional things which truly need high priority (CD burning, etc) and having to run them as root all the time has always struck me as a bit dicey.