1AND.PRIORITIES(5) File Formats AND.PRIORITIES(5)
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6 /etc/and/and.priorities - priority database for the auto nice daemon.
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11 This manual page documents and.priorities for and version 1.2.2.
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16 This is the priority database file for and. It stores (user, group,
17 command, parent, nicelevels) tuples (hereafter called entries) to
18 determine the new nice level (or the kill signal, for that matter) when
19 a job reaches one of the time limits defined in /etc/and/and.conf.
20 (See lv1time, lv2time, and lv3time on the and.conf manual page for
21 details.) See the affinity setting in /etc/and/and.conf for how ambigu‐
22 ities between the fields (user, group, command, parent) are dealt with
23 when searching the database to determine the new nice level for a job.
24 Note that if more than one entry matches with the same accuracy (e.g.
25 with a parent= entry and an ancestor= entry), the last entry wins!
26 Comments start with a # in the first column. Empty lines are ignored.
28 Unlike with other configuration files, lines cannot be concatenated
29 with a backslash. Furthermore, this file is case sensitive.
30 and allows for host-specific sections in the configuration file. These
32 work as lines of the form on somehost and work as follows: the parser
33 determines if the host name (as returned by gethostname) matches the
34 extended regular expression that follows the on keyword. If it does, it
35 just keeps processing the file as if nothing had happened. If it does
36 not match, however, everything up to the next on keyword is skipped. So
37 if you want to end a host-specific section, you must write on .*
38 (which matches all hosts) to switch back to normal.
39 Don't forget to kill -HUP the auto nice daemon to enable the changes.
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45 A valid entry consists of a line of six columns, separated by one or
46 more spaces. These columns are: (in that order)
47 user The user ID the command is running under. May be a user name
50 (which will be looked up in the password file and, if enabled, via
51 NIS), or a numeric user ID, or an asterisk for any user.
52 group
55 The group ID the command is running under. May be a group name
56 (which will be looked up in the group file and again, if enabled,
57 via NIS), or a numeric group ID, or an asterisk for any group.
58 command
61 The name of the command, without path. May be a command, a regular
62 expression to match multiple commands, or an asterisk for any com‐
63 mand. Note that "foobar" will not match "/usr/bin/foobar" - you
64 probably mean ".*foobar" or even ".*foobar.*".
65 parent
68 There are two modes of operation for the parent field, determined
69 by a keyword: parent=foobar will match if a process' direct parent
70 process matches the command or regular expression after the equal
71 sign, whereas ancestor=foobar will match if any ancestor process
72 matches. After the keyword and the equal sign goes the name of the
73 parent process, without path. May be a command, a regular expres‐
74 sion to match multiple commands, or an asterisk for any command.
75 (You can just use the asterisk if you want to ignore parents for
76 this entry.) Note that again "foobar" will not match
77 "/usr/bin/foobar", as with command.
78 nicelevel 1
81 The nice level after lv1time CPU time was used by the command.
82 Positive numbers and 0 are interpreted as nice levels; negative
83 numbers are interpreted as signals to be sent to the command. A
84 "nice level" of 19 will almost stop the job, -9 will actually kill
85 it. (Like in kill -9.) lv1time can be set in /etc/and.conf
86 nicelevel 2
89 Same but after lv2time.
90 nicelevel 3
93 Same but after lv3time.
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98 Here are some entries from the real world (i.e. from "my" cluster at
99 the Institute). As lv[123]time, 5 min., 20 min., and 1 hour is assumed.
100 (Which is the default. See /etc/and.conf for details.) You might also
101 check the default priority database that comes with and.
102 # A finer default nice level
105 * * * * 4 8 12
106 # User dau is an idiot, so treat him like accordingly
108 dau * * * 19 19 19
109 # Netscape sometimes goes berserk, we must stop it
111 * * netscape * 4 -9 -9
112 # Most hosts are free for everyone but some are
114 # especially for the FOO group
115 * * * * 4 8 12
116 on (bar|baz)
117 * * * * 8 12 16
118 # ... or, more radical: * * * * -9 -9 -9
119 * foo * * 4 8 12
120 on .*
121 # KDE screen savers...
123 * * .*kss * 16 16 16
124 # Grid jobs (assuming they are started by a master
126 # process)
127 * * * ancestor=grid_master 10 10 10
128 # Now some clever yet deceitful user might start all
129 # his jobs using a shell script named grid_master.
130 # He shall regret... whereas the original grid_master
131 # (owned by grid) is left alone.
132 * * grid_master * -9 -9 -9
133 grid * grid_master * 0 0 0
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137 /etc/and/and.priorities
138 The priority database (in plain text). Contains the (user, group,
139 command, nicelevels) tuples. This is what this manual page is
140 about.
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145 and(8), and.conf(5), kill(1), regex(7), renice(8)
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150 http://and.sourceforge.net/
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155 The auto nice daemon and this manual page were written by Patrick
156 Schemitz <schemitz@users.sourceforge.net>
157Unix 27 Mar 2005 AND.PRIORITIES(5)