Re: [Mingw-users] process priority and niceness

[John R. <web...@te...>]

NightStrike wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:26 AM, John Ratliff <web...@te...> wrote:
>   
>> I don't seem to have the command 'nice' in my msys. Does this command
>> exist on msys? Is there something similar I can do to change process
>> priority?
>>
>> I want to run mencoder in the background, but in the lowest possible
>> priority. If I use windows task manager to set the process to the lowest
>> priority, I can use the machine as needed without noticeable degradation
>> (i.e. my web browser is still immediately responsive).
>>
>> How can I do this from a bourne script in msys?
>>     
>
> The "start" command that comes with windows is for this purpose.
> start /low xxxx.exe will do exactly what you want.  See start /? for
> details.
>   
Doesn't work if you use msys. Says "can't find /LOW". Don't know why, or 
what /bin/start is, but I couldn't find any way to use this.

Here's the command I tried:

start /LOW oggenc2.exe -Q -b 96 -o audio.ogg audio.pcm

That command fails when using msys-bourne, but works fine if i'm in cmd.exe.

I tried to grab nice from cygwin, but if I use it from within msys, it 
says can't change process priority. I'm using cygwin temporarily until I 
can find a better solution. I considered rewriting my script as a 
windows batch file, but I use the same script on linux, so I would 
prefer to use a single bourne script.

There is a Win32 function called SetPriority if I want to write my own 
program. I'm going to keep looking for wheels for awhile before 
inventing a new one.

I found a program called Prio which is supposed to save the priorities 
of processes you change in task manager and change them for you when 
relaunched, but it didn't work for me. There's another one I think 
called Process Priority Manager 2008, but it's not free, and not worth 
even the $10 they want for it.

Thanks for the suggestion. If you know how I can make start work in 
msys, I'd love to hear it. That sounds like the ideal solution to me.

--John Ratliff