The Math Department has a Resource Use policy that sets a limit on the amount of resources any one user or program (job) can use. If you anticipate using a large amount of system resources with a job please let the system administrator know before you run it.
Some programs are inherent resource hogs: netscape, mathematica, maple, emacs, TeX, and ghostscript. If the system is overloaded netscape processes are the first to be killed off.
If you want to run a program so that it uses less resources, use nice to run it. nice attachs a scheduling level to a process that will allow the process to run in a less resource intensive manner. You use it like this:
See the man page for more information on using nice.
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This page was last updated on August 3, 1999. Questions, suggestions, and general grumpings should be sent to webmaster@math.okstate.edu.