Limiting load of certain processes

From: Jan Kandziora
Date: Thu Jun 21 2007 - 13:50:52 EST


Dear all,

I like to use an old DOS/Clipper application through DOSEMU on a Linux
application server in a hotel. It works, but (as usual with DOS), it causes
a processor load of 100% in certain situations, while just waiting for user
interaction.

That's kind of stupid, as power saving is heavily disturbed by such a
program and other applications loose some responsiveness. I asked the DOSEMU
crowd how to address this problem and got the following answers:

* "nice" the process to address the latter problem (ok, that's obvious), but
the load of "1" is still there.
* Configure dosemu that way the program is suspended if the dosemu window is
iconified, but users are lazy.
* And I learned there's a "tamedos" DOS application which works a little
(tears down CPU usage to 50%), but that's not enough in my view.

All that is not really great, I think. My question now is: Is there already
a way to advise the linux scheduler to limit CPU usage of certain
processes? Or do I have to develop such a thing myself?

Any better ideas?

Kind regards

Jan
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