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schedtoold - a schedtool daemon

Current version is 0.3

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Content:
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- What's schedtoold?
- Before using it!
- How it works?
- Building
- How to configure and use schedtoold?
- Changelog
- Credits


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What's schedtoold?
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It's a very simple daemon to renice/nice and change priorities of processes while
running them. That's done by schedtool.

My intention writing schedtoold was to get audio played propably (via xmms, 
rhymthbox  or realplayer) on my iBook. The problem was audio stutters when I 
started Mac-On-Linux, because of MOL takes the highest priority on my system. 
Setting  xmms and others to SCHED_ISO works very well. schedtoold does it for 
you, always when starting these programms. No interaction required.

Another example is, to let emerge/qpkg/apt-get/... to be batched (SCHED_BATCH) -
so your "normal" work isn't disturbed.

Also it seems usefull to batch kio-slaves (for instance mp3 conversion) to get
a more responsive KDE (was reported by Jos).

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Before using it!
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Use schedtoold at your _OWN_ risk!
You must agree before using schedtoold.

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How it works?
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It scans /proc for new PIDs. After looking into /proc/pid/exec and
/proc/pid/status to get the process' name it looks into it's config and runs 
schedtool if neccassary. 

Currently it looks into /proc every 2 seconds (default; use [-u sec] to 
overwrite).  Is there a better way to get notified when a process is started?
Let me know!


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How to get it running?
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Install schedtool into PATH.
Unpack schedtoold-tarball.
Compile via "make".
Install via "make install" into /usr/bin.
Run "schedtoold -h" to get a quick overview about command line options.
Now go and configure (see below). 


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How to configure?
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Place an schedtoold.conf in /etc with following format:
  [%group:|user:]   program-name    schedtool parameter
Examples:
  root: /usr/bin/xmms   -I
  %users: dpkg   -B
  kio_*  -B

# Note:
#   Rules are parsed from top downwards. The first rule matches is valid!

# WARNING: 
#   Adding programms without absolute paths could be used to make your computer
#   unusable!
#   For instance:
#   Adding "mplayer -R" causes every programm named mplayer to become SCHED_RR 
#   - even those created in every directories and started by non-root users. The
#   programm could burn all your CPU cycles.
#   So DO NOT use SCHED_RR, SCHED_ISO and negative renice without absolute paths
#   to the executables!

# WARNING:
#   Wildcards are also valid for directories!
#   E.g. "/usr/bin* -B" will SCHED_BATCH every programms located in /usr/bin! 

Settings per user or group are supported.
 example 1: set xmms only to SCHED_ISO if running in group users
   %users: /usr/bin/xmms -I
 example 2: only allow root to run xmms as SCHED_ISO
   root:  xmms -I
 example 3: allow ALL users to run xmms as SCHED_ISO
   ALL: xmms -I
 If no group or user is given ALL: is assumed.

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Changelog
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Version 0.3
- renamed to schedtoold (instead of scheD) for gentoo packaging conformance
- renamed sched.cfg to schedtoold.conf, it's more "standard" conform 
  (Andreas Mohr)
- new features:
  - "-p pid_file" option
  - "-u sec" option to set update interval
  - possibility to define rules per user or group in schedtoold.conf
    look at doc/README and doc/schedtoold.conf-example
  - absolute paths for executables are now supported, like /usr/bin/xmms
    AND STRONGLY RECOMMENDED! Look at doc/README for details.
    (Solution isn't perfect yet. See discussion on ck-mailing list.)
  - gentoo and debian init-scripts (thanks Ray for his contribution)
  - running as non-root is now supported, only processes with schedtoold's
    uid will be touched
- fixes:
  - wildcard support
  - changed error messages of schedtool (Javier Kohen)
  - spelling fixes (Andreas Mohr)

Version 0.2
- support for wildcards (the '*' is only valid at the end of programm name!)
- improved config file handling (f.e. no limit for count of configured programms)
- more error checking
- verbose improved (when running -v)
- use pid_t instead of int
- updated sched.cfg example
- added schedtool-1.2.4.patch for newer ck-patchset to handle SCHED_ISO right
- last and least: run indent to format source code :)

Version 0.1
- initial release 


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Credits
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For testing and comments I want to say Thanks to all of you!
Idea was taken from ck-mailing list and industrialstrengthsolutions.com/prioryd/.
Schedtool can be found here: http://freequaos.host.sk/schedtool/


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Please
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Please feel free to send BUG reports (I'm sure you'll find some), suggestions 
and comments.


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