Re: Anacron (was: Add "nice -10" to /etc/crontab run-parts comma
On Tue, 8 Jun 1999, Sarel Botha wrote:
>> > Is there any way to track any signs of the system being busy (keys, mouse,
>> > system load, perhaps others) and start jobs during idle times? That would be
>> > a very nice alternative to cron and anacron!
>> >
>>
>> This would be very tricky.
>
>I think you only need to monitor cpu usage, not keyboard and mouse. If you're
>doing nothing the cpu load will be low. If you're away from the computer and
>you left it running some cpu-intensive program, you wouldn't want cron jobs to
>run then either.
Unfortunately, the nature of most sittin-in-front-of-the-computer use is
that it's usually sporatic: Spikes of activity when you open emacs, but
acutally typing that doc requires little use. Unless you want to do
some averaging or something...
nice takes care of this well :) if nothing is happening, it tears on
full blast, but if you want to start netscape, it steps aside while you
do so. (guess you can tell how I feel about this topic)
-Michael
Michael Stenner Office Phone: 919-660-2513
Duke University, Dept. of Physics mstenner@phy.duke.edu
Box 90305, Durham N.C. 27708-0305
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