Re: [Mingw-users] process priority and niceness

[NightStrike <nig...@gm...>]

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 1:33 PM, John Ratliff <web...@te...> wrote:
> 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.

$ cmd "/c start /low mycommandline"

where '$' of course is your prompt, and you type the rest :)