Thanks Andrew. I’ll play with it once we order the SM200’s since it’s not currently a pressing issue for us. Just exploring potential risks.
Our processing is also in other threads, and we’re seeing pretty low utilization compared to what we expected so we might be ok. I can write a simple program to check that it’s working or not, but it’s always useful to make sure that you’ve set the right permissions on the actual final executable process 🙂
I updated our current script to use #1 above, set the process to -10 nice and was able to execute it without having to sudo. htop showed it at -10 nice level, and it did seem to get first priority over CPU resources. Used -20 (realtime, aka all the CPU) and it did consume all of the CPU. So it should be easy to test once I get to that point.
But reading more about it, niceness probably isn’t going to work.
The easiest way would be to allow your application to run as root by editing the sudoers file to allow it without password. But then you’re giving all root capabilities to the .exe, which if altered could result in complete pwnage of the system.
Next easiest woul be to allow access to a command, like set_rlimit
or chrt or setcap() via the sudoers file. That should be simple and safe, but I’m not in a place to test it right now. Linux just has so many darn ways to skin a cat, it can be hard to figure out which one is the best.
