does commands.getoutput() use nice()?

[Steve Holden]

Garry Hodgson wrote:
> a friend is trying to track down the source of a mysterious
> slowdown that's happening in a webware app he's doing.
> 
> he's got an external precompiled application that he invokes
> from python using commands.getoutput().  usually it runs quickly
> (1-2 secs), but sometimes it take much longer (80-90 secs).
> he's instrumented the program to verify that it's the query invocation
> that's spending all the time.  he's run the query in a test rig outside 
> of python, and it seems to run normally all the time.  but when run
> from python, via webware, he gets this wide performance variations.
> 
> his current hypothesis is that when python runs his command, it
> "nices" it down in priority, so it's more susceptible to other load
> on the machine.  i searched the python source, and don't see anyplace
> that appears to do this.  but i thought i'd check here anyway.
> 
> can anyone support or reject his theory?
> 
> thanks
> 
Define "sometimes".

It may be webware session cleanup that's hitting him, or some other 
phenomenon that only occurs when teh server is relatively heavily loaded.

regards
  Steve