[linux-audio-user] increasing runtime priority

[Noah Roberts]

On 5/8/05, Florian Schmidt <mista.tapas at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 7 May 2005 22:02:01 -0700
> Noah Roberts <roberts.noah at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Ok, now that I have the kernel and everything set up and jackd is
> > running in realtime mode, how do I tell the kernel to do that with
> > other programs that don't know enough to increase their own
> > priorities?  Is there a wrapper program that will start another
> > program at an increased priority?
> >
> > This could be something I should already know, but I haven't ever had
> > to do it before so I don't.
> 
> programs need to be designed for realtime mode. Especially they need to
> give up the cpu in periodic intervals to keep the system responsive.
> 
> Many programs like games won't even work right when running SCHED_FIFO.

Well is that what this nice/rt thing does?  When I was looking to see
if the code was already in the kernel I was kind of paying attention
to what it appeared to do...kind of.  It seemed to me that it was all
set up so you could just increase the priority of tasks and tell the
kernel they don't have to be as nice to other programs and not to
necissarily pre-empt them.  I would think that it might be beneficial
to just up a program's priority a touch or maybe lower its nice level
a touch so it might run a little smoother at the expense of other
programs.

Does a program on a system with a kernel with the nice-rt 'patch' need
to know about rt scheduling?