CPU Usage
Determining Process Information
The commands ps, top, uptime, and xload provide information about your processes and the system CPU load. See the respective man pages, or just try them to learn what they can do.
Balancing the Load on Allspice
Frequently, near the end of the semester, when final projects are being done, the load on allspice is high. This can be alleviated by running jobs on the client CPUs (aleppo, lime, mugwort, olive, ... and all the rest of the computers that you see around you in the lab). This will provide a faster turnaround for you, and a more responsive server for other users.
Additionally, we suggest that all programs that will run for an extended amount of time (for example, more than 15 minutes) be "niced" to a lower priority, so that other users will not see the system slow to a crawl. For example, if you are about to start a long program, try the following:
% nice +20 ./a.out
If you have already started you program, use renice to change the priority:
% renice +20 -p pid
where pid is the Process ID of your program (found by using the ps command). If nobody is using the computer your job is running on, it will get 100% of the CPU. If someone is using the computer your job is running on, your job will run at a lower priority.