Nicer Home Page

Description

Cross-platform job submission for running jobs with the least impact on other jobs - a single, simpler replacement for both nice and renice (and commands such as npri) on any unix machine without having to learn any options, and it's free. It adjusts the scheduling for new or running processes to the "nicest" possible often by working around "interesting features". i.e. nicer is your best way to use up any CPU time that isn't being used and for best interactive performance. It has support for all major unix platforms.

Batch queue-less system

You may not have or want to have a batch queuing system installed on your machines. In this case, you can use nicer as part of a easy to use non-queued batch system with 3 priority levels:

Priority Use Command flags needed

1 interactive and short jobs - -

2 medium term jobs nice or renice * renice flags depend on platform

3 long jobs nicer ** -

* renice flags vary so it's best to submit jobs with nice only
**Without nicer, users must use nice and renice with non-default flags. These are dependent on platform and shell.
Because of the simplicity and ease of use of this system, it is hoped that

Priority	Use	Command	flags needed
1	interactive and short jobs	-	-
2	medium term jobs	nice or renice	* renice flags depend on platform
3	long jobs	nicer **	-

users can share the CPU resource simply and effectively
no user learning curve for the intricacies of a particular batch queuing system
no relying on a central system group for setting up and maintaining an often politically based batch queuing system
no excuse for interactive users to suffer from non-niced jobs.

Distribution

Open Source (free) software - released under a GNU public licence

Download

The latest version can obtained here nicer latest version

Using

To submit a job called "cpueater":
```
nicer cpueater
```
To nicer an already running job that wasn't submitted using nicer with the process IDs "7345 7346 7348":
```
nicer 7345 7346 7348
```

Usage Help

Here's the nicer help screen. You will find that nicer is a drop in replacement for nice and renice without even needing to use any flags.

USAGE: nicer [-nobellsandwhistles] [-nice|-renice] PIDs|job

-nice,-renice      force usage like nice or renice - default is automatic
-nobellsandwhistles turn off any bells and whistles (just use nice values)
-help,--version    show this message

EXAMPLES:    nicer cpueater
             nicer 7345 7346 7348
             nicer 012cpueater
             nicer -nice 012
DESCRIPTION: give me the process id(s) of your running process(es)
             or give me the job you want to run.
             I will use the best method for running long jobs on this machine.
             see man nice and man renice for more info.
PLATFORMS:   Linux 2.x ([10].x)
             IRIX64/IRIX 6.[5432] (6.1 6.0x) 5.3 (5.x) 4.0.5H (4.x)
             OSF1/DU V4.0 V3.2 (V[4321].x)
             Solaris/SunOS 5.5 5.4 (5.[76] 5.5.x 5.x)
             ULTRIX 4.4 ([4321].x)
             ESV 2.3 ([21].x)
             (x)
VERSION:     1.3
AUTHOR:      problems or comments to [email protected] www.gpcr.org/johnny
HOMEPAGE:    http://www.gpcr.org/johnny/sft/nicer.html
UPDATES:     ftp://www.gpcr.org/pub/nicer.tar.gz
BUGS:        use -nice if job name is only numerical
             /bin/sh is used to run the job which might not be what you want
             any bells and whistles might do bell and whistley type things

Technical

If the argument is a number, then renice is used, else nice is used This process is not backgrounded, which might be annoying for very nice jobs you want to kill with ^C. The solution is to background the job yourself rather than change this away from what nice does. note that forcing nice may not!

Configuration

system admin configurable part

# system admin configurable part
# allow this to continue (and therefore make a good guess) if the operating system is untested
# override untested no-run
UNTESTED=y
#UNTESTED=n

#!/bin/sh
# ULTRIX installations will need the above /bin/sh changed to use a bourne compatible shell that has functions
# e.g. /usr/local/bin/bash

Versions

1.3 29.7.98 support added for ESV, ULTRIX, OSF1/DU 3.2, SunOS 5.4, and interpolated settings for all others
1.2 28.7.98 IRIX 6.5 support added, IRIX 6.4 default changed
1.1 13.10.97 First release

To do

man page
support for FreeBSD, SunOS 5.6 5.5.1, next, HPUX, aix, non SUSE linux (bins in different places)