The search for the correct amount of split-lock misery [LWN.net]

The search for the correct amount of split-lock misery

Posted Oct 24, 2022 13:35 UTC (Mon) by implr (guest, #159818)
In reply to: The search for the correct amount of split-lock misery by developer122
Parent article: The search for the correct amount of split-lock misery

>The entire steam linux runtime, and indeed every wine runtime MUST NOT require any more privileges than a regular user program. For installation or during runtime.
It already does, at least for VR. On first run SteamVR will ask for sudo, which it uses to setcap CAP_SYS_NICE on its various binaries. If it detects that it can already run at nice -10, it'll skip that step.

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The search for the correct amount of split-lock misery

Posted Oct 24, 2022 15:08 UTC (Mon) by developer122 (guest, #152928) [Link] (2 responses)

*Due to unix's legacy as a multiuser system.* It dates back to the early days of unix that only root can decrease a nice value, giving more cpu time.

Does this privileged tunable make any sense on a singe user system? No it does not.
Worst case scenario, the user only DoSs themselves.

The search for the correct amount of split-lock misery

Posted Oct 24, 2022 21:01 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

And wasn't Unix originally written to run games? Specifically Star Trek, iirc ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

The search for the correct amount of split-lock misery

Posted Oct 25, 2022 10:22 UTC (Tue) by geert (subscriber, #98403) [Link]

Didn't they just needed an OS to develop a document formatting system for the AT&T patents division? ;-)

https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/html_node/Histo...