Setting budgets to zero

It's possible to set the budget of a partition to zero as long as the SCHED_APS_SEC_NONZERO_BUDGETS security flag isn't set—see the SCHED_APS_ADD_SECURITY command for SchedCtl().

Threads in a zero-budget partition run only in these cases:

When is it useful to set the budget of a partition to zero?

It useful to set the budget of a partition to zero when:

Note: Typically, setting a partition's budget to zero is not recommended. (This is why the SCHED_APS_SEC_RECOMMENDED security setting doesn't permit partition budgets to be zero.) The main risk in placing code into a zero-budget partition is that it may run in response to a pulse or event (i.e., not a message), and therefore, not run in the sender's partition. As a result, when the system is loaded (i.e., there's no free time), those threads may simply not run; they might hang, or things might occur in the wrong order.

For example, it's hazardous to set the System partition's budget to zero. On a loaded machine with a System partition of zero, requests to procnto to create processes and threads may hang, for example, when MAP_LAZY is used. In addition, if your system uses zero-budget partitions, you should carefully test it with all other partitions fully loaded with while(1) loops.