The N= delivery
agent equate is used to give a delivery agent a higher or lower
priority in relation to other processes. In general, this equate is
useful only for programs that can affect other programs because of
increased system or disk load, or for programs that are affected by
others for the same reasons. This mechanism is discussed in the
online manual for nice(3).
The form for the N= delivery agent equate looks
like this:
N=val
Here, val is a signed integer expression
that will set the "niceness" to a
positive or negative value. If val is zero
or missing, the niceness of the delivery agent is unchanged.
One possible application for the N= delivery agent
equate might be with USENET news. Because news seldom needs to flow
as quickly as normal email, its delivery agent
(usenet) can be forced to run at a low system
priority. Just add a line such as the following to your
mc configuration file:
define(`USENET_MAILER_PATH', `/usr/lib/news/inews, N=10')
The path shown should, of course, match the actual location of
inews.
