BOINC and priorities set in /etc/init.d/boinc-client

[Steffen Möller]

Hello,

I was contacted by the Einstein at Home developers, who experience more
than they like sudden ends of scientific apps. This they charge
on our renice-+19-ing of the boinc-client, which would not be
executed sufficiently often to ping a hartbeat to the apps (every 30
seconds) besides its other duties like downloading files and
surviving slow DNS etc..

Another issue of concern for them is a low CPU priority for
GPU tasks. This is a bit ironic, but if the CPU is not available
for the GPU when the card needs it, i.e. when it runs out of data
or sends back results, then performance suffers badly. So, even
when the CPU is not needed much, it should not fight for priorities
when it is needed.

I will now exclude GPU children of boinc from being niced down or
otherwise be touched by the init script. And also I will set the
boinc-client to a nice level of 10 instead of 19.

Please raise your objections, if any.

Steffen