On Sun, Dec 28, 2008 at 2:07 AM, Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Saturday 27 December 2008, Nikos Chantziaras wrote: >> >> Another reason I >> >> didn't put Gentoo on the server is because everyone would start spamming >> >> the forums about lag when I emerge -u world while they're getting frags >> >> in Counter-Strike :P >> > >> > set PORTAGE_NICENESS=19 in /etc/make.conf >> >> I'll just hay "ah, ah, ah" at that one :P OK, I'll also say that it >> doesn't work. Everything lags even with 19. > > Is that measurable? Niceness effects are most easily noticeable for CPU bottlenecks, because context switching CPUs is relatively painless. Server loads are probably more of Memory / IO bottlenecks, and context switching between that involves disk swaps and disk prereads. If it is anything more than trivial prereads / swaps, then even a 19-niced app can cause noticeable bursts of slowdown on a modern system. Niceness isn't magic, and compiling, which could easily max out all 3 resources (CPU, memory, disk access, 4 if you add network), probably gets the least bump from niceness.
Although that isn't to say that PORTAGE_NICENESS doesn't take effect. Desktop machines with a single user will probably have speed bursts small enough that it wouldn't matter. But I'd think twice if there was something intensive supposed to be done on the server.
