sshd + bash nice values

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (Dan Ritter)]

On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 09:50:11AM -0500, Kristian Hermansen wrote:
> Is there a way to easily set the nice value for invoked sshd and bash
> processes automatically on remote login?  The problem I am having is
> that vmware-vmx processes run by default with a -10 nice value and my
> sshd/bash processes ru nat default of 0, so it is very difficult to
> remotely administer the machine when you have vmware-vmx processes
> killing your command queue!  It's like interacting with a barrel of
> sludge.  When I reniced the values manually, everything sped up quite
> *nicely*...heh  Any ideas?

In whatever script starts your sshd -- probably /etc/init.d/ssh,
but this can vary -- add a niceness prefix to the start command.

For example, on a Debian box:

/etc/init.d/ssh:
...
echo -n "Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd"
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/sshd.pid --exec /usr/sbin/sshd -- $SSHD_OPTS
echo ".
...

you could change the --exec string to 
--exec /usr/bin/nice -12 /usr/sbin/sshd -- $SSHD_OPTS

I haven't tried this, but that's the obvious place to change
such things.

nice values are inherited by child processes.

-dsr-

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