debian man page for loadwatch

LOADWATCH(1)						      General Commands Manual						      LOADWATCH(1)

NAME
       loadwatch - run a program when machine is idle

SYNOPSIS
       loadwatch [options] -p pid | [--] prog [args]

DESCRIPTION
       loadwatch  either  spawns  a  child process prog with the arguments args and controls it with all its process group, or takes control of an
       already running process with pid pid with all its process group.

       loadwatch allows the controlled processes to run while the load average remains below high_limit. Every delay seconds, loadwatch checks the
       load average. If the load is above high_limit, the child is suspended; the child is resumed when the load falls below low_limit.

OPTIONS
       A summary of options is included below.

       -h high_limit
	      A decimal value that sets the system load at which the child process will be suspended. (Default: 1.25)

       -l low_limit
	      A decimal value that sets the system load at which the child process will be resumed. (Default: 0.25)

       -d delay
	      An integral number of seconds that sets how often the system load will be checked. (Default: 10)

       -n copies
	      An integer value that sets the number of copies of prog to run. (Default: 1)

       -u file
	      Create a UNIX domain socket file for use by lw-ctl.

       -p pid The pid of the program that should be controlled by loadwatch (with all its process group).

SEE ALSO
       lw-ctl(1), nice(1)

BUGS
       You  should  choose low_limit and high_limit carefully. When the load drops below low_limit, the process(es) will be resumed, and it should
       not, by itself, cause the load to raise	above  high_limit,  or	the  whole  will  oscillate,  periodically  suspending	and  resuming  the
       process(es).

       Similarly,  if several instances of loadwatch are running, they may resume their processes at the same time, leading to oscillations if the
       limits are not carefully chosen. Hence, each instance of loadwatch affects every other instance on the computer, and should not be  consid-
       ered in isolation.

AUTHOR
       This  manual  page  was written by Dale E. Martin <dmartin@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). It was
       then updated by Nicolas Boullis <nboullis@debian.org>.

								     July 2003							      LOADWATCH(1)