henry (06/02/82)
If you are doing big, long-running computations, you should make an effort to be polite to other users of the system by using the "nice" command. For example, instead of % myprogram something say % nice myprogram something This will do exactly the same thing, except that it will run your program at a lower priority than normal system activities, which will tend to keep it out of other peoples' way. It is courteous to other users to do this, especially if you're doing your computing during the day when system usage is heavy. If you want to be VERY polite to other people, doing the following will arrange that your program uses system resources only when nobody else wants them: % nice -20 myprogram something Under either of these, your program will run somewhat more slowly, but if it is running for hours anyway this shouldn't be a serious problem.