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NICE/2
By Sharon Dagan <idagan@il.ibm.com>
What is NICE/2?
Have you ever started a long XCOPY command that ate too much CPU? Have you ever wanted to make Netscape/2 more responsive? NICE/2 is here to rescue. With NICE/2 you can dynamically change the priority of many processes in OS/2. As opposed to programs such as SPE that start a process in a given priority, NICE/2 enables you to change the priority of processes and threads after they have been started.
Jump
to [Installation] [Basic]
[Advanced] [Utilities]
[SDK] [Known
Problems] [Error codes]
Simply put \nice\dll in your LIBPATH and \nice\bin in your PATH.
NICE/2 is divided into three components: Server, GUI client and command line client. To start using NICE/2, the server must be running. To start the server, issue the command:
niced.exe -start
This will attempt to start the server. If everything went ok, niced.exe quietly returns. If the server could not be started, niced.exe reports the error and aborts the operation. To find out if the server is running or not, issue:
niced.exe
This will tell you if the server is running or not. To stop the server, issue:
niced.exe -stop
This will attempt to stop the server. This might take a few seconds. If the server was successfully stopped, niced.exe quietly returns. If an error occurred while stopping the server, niced.exe reports the error but still stops the server.
If you intend to use NICE/2 a lot, start the server in your STARTUP.CMD or STARTUP folder. NICE/2 takes only a fraction of OS/2 resources, so there's really no good reason against it.
After the server has been started, use either the GUI or the command line to interact with NICE/2. Lets say you want to change the priority of Netscape and make it a bit more responsive.
NICE/2 is provided with several utilites to ease the use of NICE/2. The utlities provided are not part of the core NICE/2 build tree and don't use any of the NICE/2 API's - they can be used 'stand-alone'.
niceps.exe [-p PID] -
use this utility to report process and thread information. When
invoked without switches, niceps.exe reports the list of currenlty
running processes in the system. When used with the '-p' switch,
niceps.exe reports thread information for the specified process.
nicex.exe -c CLASS -d DELTA COMMAND [...]
- use this utility to start a process in a certain priority. CLASS
and DELTA values are the same as the nice.exe
command.
SDK for C/C++ and REXXNICE/2 is provided with a SDK for C/C++ and REXX. Use this SDK to extend NICE/2 or integrate it with your own programs and scripts. The C/C++ SDK has been built with VisualAge C++ v3.0 but should work with EMX/GCC too. The C/C++ SDK includes head er and lib files (nice.h, nice.lib) and a sample program (sample.c, sample.mak). The C/C++ SDK includes the following functions:
NiceStatus() - see if the NICE/2
server is running
NiceSetPriority( pid, tid, class, delta ) -
set the priority of a process and/or thread
NiceIOCtl( cmd, param1, param2 ) -
generic way to contanct the NICE/2 server
NICE/2 also includes a REXX SDK to ease integration of NICE/2 with scripts. The NICE/2 REXX SDK is comprehansive and includes the NICE/2 REXX DLL (rxnice.dll) and two sample files (sample1.cmd, sample2.cmd). The REXX SDK includes the following functions:
RxNiceLoadFuncs() and
RxNiceDropFuncs()
RxNiceStatus() - wrapper for
NiceStatus
RxNiceSetPriority( pid, tid, class,
delta ) - wrapper for NiceSetPriority
RxNiceIOCtl( cmd, param1, param2 )
- wrapper for NiceIOCtl
RxNicePS() - get a list of all
processes and thread information
RxNiceMyPID() - returns the PID
of this process
Known Problems
If you have a problem not listed here and you susspect a bug, please take a few minutes and download the debug version of NICE/2. With this version, the NICE/2 server writes a detailed log file that could help you (and me) diagnose the problem. Here is a list of known problems:
When a VDM (DOS window and Win-OS/2 window) is brought to the
foreground, OS/2 alters the priority of the process back to
(usualy) Regular 0.