Laszlo corrected this, but unfortunately it was too late to make it into 0.3.0. There will probably be a 0.3.1 soon though.
The problem is I used PRIO_MIN, I should have used PRIO_MAX for the lowest priority. The OS isn't supposed to let you increase priority, so the PRIO_MIN ought to leave it at priority 0.
Topic: bitcoin auto-renice-ing (Read 50910 times)
lachesis - htop
its awesome.. has ANSI colors, you can fully configure it to display all threads, tree view, etc ,etc
its awesome.. has ANSI colors, you can fully configure it to display all threads, tree view, etc ,etc
Asdfman, what program is generating that output? I like it 
I think that this might be a bug... https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bitcoind-possibly-process-priority-bug-285
Hello,
This same behavior was bugging me too.. I would renice all the threads to 19, as it was interrupting system responsiveness since bitcoind was taking priority, but every so often the program would automatically reset the priority to something that would disrupt system responsiveness ..
so what I did was just edit util.h
and change the function that manipulates the priority:
inline void SetThreadPriority(int nPriority)
{
printf("No, were not changing any damn priority\n");
}
and then recompiled bitcoind
now I just renice all the threads once, and they are stuck at what I set them to until program exit (NI column staying at 19):
in my debug.log:
[root@raidserv] (~/.bitcoin)# grep "No," debug.log
No, were not changing any damn priority
No, were not changing any damn priority
No, were not changing any damn priority
No, were not changing any damn priority
...
So now I can leave bitcoind running all day long without me noticing much...
This same behavior was bugging me too.. I would renice all the threads to 19, as it was interrupting system responsiveness since bitcoind was taking priority, but every so often the program would automatically reset the priority to something that would disrupt system responsiveness ..
so what I did was just edit util.h
and change the function that manipulates the priority:
inline void SetThreadPriority(int nPriority)
{
printf("No, were not changing any damn priority\n");
}
and then recompiled bitcoind
now I just renice all the threads once, and they are stuck at what I set them to until program exit (NI column staying at 19):
Code:
1 [||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||100.0%] Time: 03:59:40
2 [||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||100.0%] Uptime: 253 days(!), 01:12:27
Mem[||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||501/1255MB] Load: 4.01
Swp[|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 501/1004MB] Load average: 4.01 4.15 3.49
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
| | |__ __| |__ |__||__ |__| | | | | | | | | | | | | __| __| | |
Avg: |__|.|__|% sy: |__ . __|% ni: __||__|.|__|% hi: |__|.|__|% si: |__|.|__|% wa: |__|.|__|% Tasks: __| __| | total, | running
PID USER PRI NI VIRT RES SHR S CPU% MEM% TIME+ Command
4523 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.66 `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4534 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 R 90.0 3.6 12:43.73 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4533 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 R 45.0 3.6 10:49.02 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4532 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 R 46.0 3.6 10:05.83 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4531 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.03 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4530 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 S 1.0 3.6 0:15.53 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4529 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.72 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4527 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.02 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4526 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.03 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
4525 root 39 19 126M 46280 3424 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.06 | `- bitcoind -gen -daemon
[root@raidserv] (~/.bitcoin)# grep "No," debug.log
No, were not changing any damn priority
No, were not changing any damn priority
No, were not changing any damn priority
No, were not changing any damn priority
...
So now I can leave bitcoind running all day long without me noticing much...
It sets different priorities for each thread. The generate threads run at PRIO_MIN. The other threads rarely take any CPU and run at normal.
#define THREAD_PRIORITY_LOWEST PRIO_MIN
#define THREAD_PRIORITY_BELOW_NORMAL 2
#define THREAD_PRIORITY_NORMAL 0
The priorities converted from Windows priorities were probably from a table like this:
"The following table shows the mapping between nice values and Win32 priorities. Refer to the Win32 documentation for SetThreadPriority() for more information on Win32 priority issues.
nice value Win32 Priority
-20 to -16 THREAD_PRIORITY_HIGHEST
-15 to -6 THREAD_PRIORITY_ABOVE_NORMAL
-5 to +4 THREAD_PRIORITY_NORMAL
+5 to +14 THREAD_PRIORITY_BELOW_NORMAL
+15 to +19 THREAD_PRIORITY_LOWEST"
If you have better values, suggestions welcome.
Also, there was some advice on the web that PRIO_PROCESS is used on Linux because threads are processes. If that's not true, maybe it accounts for unexpectedly setting the priority of the whole app.
// threads are processes on linux, so PRIO_PROCESS affects just the one thread
setpriority(PRIO_PROCESS, getpid(), nPriority);
#define THREAD_PRIORITY_LOWEST PRIO_MIN
#define THREAD_PRIORITY_BELOW_NORMAL 2
#define THREAD_PRIORITY_NORMAL 0
The priorities converted from Windows priorities were probably from a table like this:
"The following table shows the mapping between nice values and Win32 priorities. Refer to the Win32 documentation for SetThreadPriority() for more information on Win32 priority issues.
nice value Win32 Priority
-20 to -16 THREAD_PRIORITY_HIGHEST
-15 to -6 THREAD_PRIORITY_ABOVE_NORMAL
-5 to +4 THREAD_PRIORITY_NORMAL
+5 to +14 THREAD_PRIORITY_BELOW_NORMAL
+15 to +19 THREAD_PRIORITY_LOWEST"
If you have better values, suggestions welcome.
Also, there was some advice on the web that PRIO_PROCESS is used on Linux because threads are processes. If that's not true, maybe it accounts for unexpectedly setting the priority of the whole app.
// threads are processes on linux, so PRIO_PROCESS affects just the one thread
setpriority(PRIO_PROCESS, getpid(), nPriority);
Hi, I run bitcoin at a nice level of 20 so as not to interfere with other tasks. Every now and then, however, it seems to auto-adjust itself to nice level 2, or even 0. It this by design? Frankly, such a thing should be illegal for a linux application... it's a bit odd to say the least.
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