I have a cron job that runs every half an hour to grab my waiting email and whatever usenet messages are applicable for the groups I am reading. The trouble is that once it starts the system load increases rapidly (to anywhere from 3 to 5) and causes any other process I am running to stall until it has finished its course.
It is beginning to frustrate me. I know the simple solution is to buy more RAM but with my computer budget basically in negative figures when it comes to my wife's point of view I need to explore any other options first. I was wondering the other day if it was possible to reduce the paralyzing load by nicing the process somewhere, but I have doubts and am wondering if it will really help and if so, where to do it. My system: kernel 2.0.32 (the latest pre-patch), latest Debian unstable, Intel 486-dx2 running at 50Mhz, 16M RAM, 26M Swap. I have diald setup to logon via ppp over a 14.4 modem. The process to pop my email: fetchmail -> sendmail -> procmail in .forward -> and finally using rcvstore to split my mail into whatever mh folder it should go into. Also around that time (I really should put them in sequence rather than in parallel) leafnode connects to my ISP's news server via fetch. Thanks for any help. -- The AtticKeeper: Rev. David Morris mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Leap and the net will appear -- unknown --- Nerdnosh Attic: http://www.netins.net/showcase/nerdnosh Lectionary Page: http://www.netins.net/showcase/dmorris/ -- -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .