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From: Mark Hadfield <m DOT hadfield AT niwa DOT co DOT nz>
Subject:  Re: slow windows foreground operation after installing cygwin-1.5.17-1
Date:  Mon, 30 May 2005 12:07:28 +1200
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Charles D. Russell wrote:
> The new cygwin1.dll (1.5.17-1) now lets me run fortran programs with large
> static arrays that occupy most of the available memory, but it is no longer
> possible to run Windows programs (MSWord or even Windows Explorer)
> in the foreground while a big math problem is chugging along in the
> background. The foreground Windows process appears not to get enough 
> priority in the
> time sharing allocation to function at a usable speed.
> 
> _____________________
> The problem disappeared after a clean reinstallation using setup to 
> re-download everything.  (My actual intent was to have a smaller set of 
> download files in order to back up the current cygwin installation to 
> CD, but it happened to fix the problem.)

This may be flogging a dead horse (since you say the problem has gone 
away) but you didn't say what priority were you running the background 
program at. Since you didn't say--and it's obviously relevant--I wonder 
if you know about the facilities for setting program priorities. These 
include the Cygwin "nice" command and the "Set Priority" item in Task 
Manager (switch to process list and right-click on the process in question).

I do a lot of CPU-intensive, RAM-hungry numerical work in Windows 2000, 
with a variety of applications, some Cygwin and some not, and I have 
found that they *normally* interfere with foreground operation unless I 
reduce the priority of the background task. Part of the problem is that 
Windows GUI operations may to spin off low-priority tasks which then 
take *forever* to execute. The DDE system seems to be particularly prone 
to this. So I find myself adjusting priorities regularly.

-- 
Mark Hadfield            "Ka puwaha te tai nei, Hoea tatou"
m DOT hadfield AT niwa DOT co DOT nz
National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)


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