Re: "Real" Multitasking (Re: GNO questions...)

[vandry@CAM.ORG (Phillip Vandry)]

toddpw@cco.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) writes:

>By the way, unix also does cooperative multitasking, to prevent daemons from
>pegging the load average. "man select" for more info.

Could you explain? I just checked out the manpage and select(3C) looks like
it's got nothing to do with multitasking. It just tells you, given a bunch
of file descriptors, which ones are ready for reading/writing/"other"

Besides, why would cooperative multitasking be necesary to prevent daemons
from pegging the load average?

If there is cooperative multitasking, that means something runs and returns
control to the system when IT wants, not when the system wants. So which are
the processes that UNIX won't automatically switch?
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