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From: go@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Gary Oliver)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: nice for Minix?
Message-ID: 
Date: 5 Apr 91 05:28:36 GMT
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waltje@minixug.mugnet.org (Fred 'The Rebel' van Kempen) writes:

>go@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Gary Oliver) wrote:
>> 
>> Just thought I'd put in a good word for the nice "nice" package submitted
>> by Kai-Uwe Bloem recently.  It works "nice"ly.

>Yes, I completely agree with you.  I added the "kub-scheduler" to Advanced
>MINIX, and it worked GREAT!  Thanks, Kai-Uwe!

>> But seriously... I pulled the cdifs out and removed the "profiler" code
[ stuff deleted ...]

>> I'm not certain, but if people would try this, the cry about having a
>> "threaded" fs may die down.  The package is a much simpler way to
>> get most of the performance asked for and it is in keeping with the
>> spirit of Minix : simple and effective.  It's a pretty classical
>> implementation of process priorities with queue pre-emption and
>> should, at least, be representative of topics discussed in any
>> OS class worth taking.

>Nope.  The new scheduler only works well for CPU-bound processes.  Since
>most I/O processes are "FS" bound, the new scheduler won't solve anything.

Well maybe on your machine, but mine is somewhat of a slug. :-)

>I am afraid that we will still need major surgery to FS, be it Multi-Threading
>or Message Queueing.  I will hunt my archives for the original message posted
>by Larry Hubble, a long time ago.  He posted message queueing code for the
>1.2 FS then, and, on my _slow_ XT, it worked like a miracle.  I will post
>it here as soon as I find it...

>Fred.

I agree with the above COMPLETELY.  My concern is, though, that since
the threaded FS stuffs seems to be stonewalled (at least I don't expect
to see it in "standard" Minix soon) we need SOMETHING to get a little
added boost out of the old box.  Personally I don't find the idea
of a more complex FS all that intimidating, but you must remember 
(as it has been said SO MANY times before) that Minix was supposed
to be simple enough for beginning OS students to understand quickly.
I didn't intend to restart this discussion, but maybe it IS time...

Gary Oliver
go@jacobs.cs.orst.edu