Guys, with respect, you have taken your eyes off the ball. I'm sure you're having lots of fun, but you are not helping Bob.
Bob wants to predict which server is idle. He has devised an ingenious system to second-guess reality. However, Bob would be better served by having a queue of known idle servers. As the servers are dedicated to him, he knows when he starts a server and it is then no longer available for assignment; and he could also find out when a server has completed its assigned task and is then available for reassignment. And when there are no idle servers, Bob would, I'm sure, wish to wait for the first server that becomes available rather than be stuck with one that has gone to never-never land. j. On 5 January 2011 12:49, Rodger Bagnall <r...@pobox.com> wrote: > Only if the number of spool files reported can be guaranteed to change > in lockstep with the transfer of the files. Even if it works at the > moment, it could change at some time in the future. It would be best to > program defensively and the simplest way is to distribute them randomly > by extending the sort key. > > Regards, > > Rodger Bagnall > > > On 2011/01/05 10:53, Paul Lautman wrote: > >> >> But the first time you give a new file to a worker, they then have 1 more >> file than the rest of the lowest, so next time you will be bound to pick a >> different one!!! >> >>
