Ubuntu 10.04.1: All 'nice' levels at 0

altech2k3 · 09-30-2010, 11:05 PM

I have freshly installed an Ubuntu 10.04.1 by internet.

All is running well, but my nice values are all set to 0. Is there a script that handles these at boot time? How can I reset them to "appropriate" or "normal" levels (e.g. not all at 0)? I know in other installs, my nice levels vary depending on the process and the user.

Attached is a screen shot of my gnome-system-monitor, and aside from init, which I had set to -15, all others are at 0.

Computer specifications:
Linux AMD-LNX000 2.6.32-25-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Fri Sep 17 20:05:27 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+
2.0 Gb RAM
26Gb ext4 /
25Gb ext3 /home
25Gb vfat
4Gb swap
TOTAL: 80Gb
ATI Radeon 9000 Series w/128 vram
1x DVD-RW/1x DVD/CD-RW

AlucardZero · 10-01-2010, 04:21 PM

Um.. 0 is normal. What makes you think it's not?

altech2k3 · 10-01-2010, 04:37 PM

I understand 0 is a default nice level; however, I have not encountered a Linux system where all processes have a 0 nice level. I frequently see daemons at -5, or something, and other root services at -15.

Obviously, this posting is more related to performance than it is an actual problem.

If you have suggestions, I welcome them. Perhaps, I should work with SysV and chkconfig and check other Linux systems to see how they perform.

AlucardZero · 10-01-2010, 05:16 PM

Well - if it ain't broke, why fix it?

I don't have any Ubuntus, by my Debian Lenny server only has kslowd00* at -5 and kmsd at +5. Everything else is 0.

martinbc · 10-02-2010, 02:08 AM

Not all niceness is set to 0, on my Ubuntu 10.4 box pulseaudio has a nice level of -11

altech2k3 · 10-04-2010, 11:13 AM

I am going to run the "Live CD" portion of this Ubuntu installation. This should be a good example to what the nice levels should be per each process. Of course, this will not determine special programs added to the install.

Does anyone know an in-system command to print out processes and their priorities to stdout?

Thanks for all the posts.

altech2k3 · 10-09-2010, 12:32 PM

The performance was improved when I used the noatime mount option in /etc/fstab.

I can also see by this installation some of the processes are running below a 0 nice level.

I am content with this installation; it took some work because my optical drives are going faulty. It's either that or the squashfs doesn't play nice with my drives.