[OS X TeX] (OT) Tiger and not Tigrrrr :-)?

[Michael S. Hanson]

On Jul 27, 2005, at 8:21 AM, Herbert Schulz wrote:

> I see mdimport (one run under my user name and occasionally one run 
> with no user (root?)) running about once every 10s taking about 15% of 
> CPU (on my 550MHz Powerbook) for a short period of time - it's running 
> "niced" so I believe will hold off if necessary.

	Just an FYI, which you may wish to take with a grain of salt:  In a 
recent meeting to discuss ways to deploy and use Xgrid at my campus, a 
local tech support guy noted -- and the Apple rep on hand confirmed -- 
that the Mach kernel doesn't actually respect 'nice' settings.  The 
tech support guy called it a "placebo":  the user sees the nice setting 
(say in 'top'), but the kernel (reportedly) completely ignores it.  The 
Apple rep was from marketing, not engineering, FWIW.

	I don't have the expertise to verify this claim as fact.  However, 
this information might help explain why some people are seeing 
slowdowns with what appear to the naked eye to be "niced" jobs.  
Perhaps a subsequent kernel update will in fact support 'nice'-ing 
processes....

                                         -- Mike

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