Try the nice command. nice 10 pid will give the process less priority than most... the values go from about -20 (high priority) to 20 (low priority) with 0 being the default for processes (i beleive). Any process spawned by another process will inherit it's nice value. --Tony Ryan Bagueros wrote:

I am wondering what kind of precautions can be taken against runaway system processes... specifically, as in user's cgi scripts. It doesn't seem fair to just kill the process, causing potential damage to a database or something.

On the other hand, the system load cannot run away. What is a good recommended system load, or is there one? (is it machine specific?)

Is there a way to assign lower priority to certain processes, causing *them* to run slower rather than the whole machine?

(and don't tell me to order a book, because i just did, it just isn't here yet!)

thanks!--

ryan

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-- ------------------------------------------------ Tony Halsell, Hewlett Packard HPSD ITRC Staff thalsell@rsn.hp.com ------------------------------------------------ UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e Check out the SuSE-FAQ at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A">http://www.suse.com/Support/Doku/FAQ/</A</A>> and the archiv at <A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html"><A HREF="http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A">http://www.suse.com/Mailinglists/suse-linux-e/index.html</A</A>>