README for the Auto Nice Daemon, AND
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The auto nice daemon will renice or even kill jobs according to a priority
database, after they take up too much CPU time. (You define what "too much"
actually means.) Refer to the man pages, and(8), and.conf(5), and
and.priorities(5), for details and instructions, and check the home page,
http://and.sourceforge.net/.


Platforms:

   Digital UNIX 4.0, 5.1
   FreeBSD 4.x
   IRIX and IRIX64
   Linux 2.2.x, 2.4.x and 2.6.x
   OpenBSD 2.7+
   Solaris 5.6

Requires:

   GNU make
   ANSI C Compiler

Documentation and Download:

   http://and.sourceforge.net/

Author:

   Patrick Schemitz <schemitz@users.sourceforge.net>

Credits:

   SRPM spec file help by Terje Rosten <terjeros@phys.ntnu.no>

   Linux/AXP jiffies to seconds fix by Markus Lischka
   <Markus_Lischka@physik.tu-muenchen.de>

   Debian package, Debian init script, Debian Makefile patches
   by Andras Bali <bali@debian.org>

   Debian Makefile patch by Mikael Andersson <mikan@mikan.net>

   The guys at INTEXXIA, http://www.intexxia.com, noticed a
   format string vulnerability and provided me with a patch.

   Pauli K. Borodulin <boro@fixel.net> pointed out that overwriting
   existing config files when doing make install was rude. He is
   right.

   Janet Casey <jcasey@gnu.org> noticed and reported that the LICENSE
   file was truncated.

   Dan Stromberg <strombrg@nis.acs.uci.edu> pointed out that
   the Digital UNIX version, and-OSF1.c, works virtually unchanged
   on IRIX, IRIX64 and Solaris (SunOS).

   "Quake2" <quake2@vladimir.eso.nu> pointed out that
   the OpenBSD version works virtually unchanged on FreeBSD.

   Marcelo Matus <mmatus@dinha.acms.arizona.edu> sent a patch for
   problems with very long running processes (alread longer than 248
   days when auto nice daemon is started), and other issues.

   Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser <hans.ekkehard.plesser@nlh.no> came up with
   the idea of also examining a process' parent, as well as with the
   minuid and mingid configuration options.

   Both xavier@rootshell.be and Jerome Warnier <jwarnier@beeznest.net>
   noticed that the Linux version accounted for usr time only; Xavier
   also provided a (one-line) fix. (Solaris, IRIX, and Tru 64 already
   did this.)

   Jerome and Martin Braure de Calignon <braurede@free.fr> noted and
   fixed a minor bug in the and.conf man page (default v. defaultnice).

   Jan Starzynski pointed out that under some Linux variants,
   /proc/<pid>/stat is always owned by root and thus unsuitable for
   obtaining the job's owner/group. He also provided a one-line fix.

Installation:

   Edit the Makefile, which is well documented. (g)make. (g)make install.
   (make simpleinstall if you don't have install(1) (which you really
   should). Edit the configuration files, /etc/and/and.conf and
   /etc/and/and.priorities. Start /usr/sbin/and. You must run it as root
   if you want it to renice or kill any jobs but your own; on all platforms
   but Linux, not even dummy mode will work for mortal users. That's due to
   the way process information is accessible under these Unices. (Linux is
   more generous here, which can be seen as both an advantage and a security
   flaw. I'm not conclusive on this topic.)

Last updated:

   This document was last updated 2005/03/27 by Patrick Schemitz
   <schemitz@users.sourceforge.net>