dialup priority
Hi, all,
Not too many facts here, will probably have to gather them.
My m/c is a standalone potatoe box running in console mode with a dial up
to ISP for email.
The other evening I booted up, and then promptly connected for the email.
Shortly after booting up, machine probably had been off for 24h,
there is a flurry of activity from the hdd. I imagine this is the
file system being updated. A look at top, for instance, shows ls
being run and lots of other stuff too. This is a regular occurrence.
At this time I was downloading the email when this happened (wvdial,
exim, fetchmail, etc) and the email download came to a grinding halt
while we had some many minutes of automatic operation tidy-up or
whatever. We don't get free local calls here, the local monopoly has
punitive rates designed to make them rich from internet surfers, so
this is a matter of serious concern.
Thought. Surely my priorities are screwed up here? If I initiate
a dial-up session, I want this to have priority over any
housekeeping task scheduled to run by cron or anachron.
What do you think? Should (can, how) I reduce priority of
housekeeping tasks or increase that of the dialup components? Can I
in fact do anything about this?
Any time that you guys can spend away from the enormous thread
developing on Debian and money etc. welcomed. (Please keep comments
on-list).
Regards
--
Ian Balchin
http://www.imaginet.co.za/fables
This machine is running Debian GNU/Linux ... http://www.debian.org
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