= Prioritizing jobs in a multi-user project =

By default, BOINC processes jobs in a roughly first-in, first-out order.
If your project has multiple job submitters,
this is probably not what you want:
users who submits lots of jobs would get more than their share of the project's capacity.
BOINC has a set of mechanisms that address this issue.
To use them, do the following:

== Set the desired quotas for job submitters ==

Create a user account for each job submitter,
and [MultiUser set their quotas].

== Modify your job submission scripts or work generators ==

Wherever you create jobs - e.g. [RemoteJobs web scripts for remote job submission]
and [WorkGeneration work generators] - you must set the priority of the jobs
as follows:

 * Compute the total FLOP estimate (workunit.rsc_fpops_est)
   of the set of jobs.
 * Run '''adjust_user_priority''' to update and return the priority
   of the submitter:
{{{
adjust_user_priority --user userID --flops X --app appname
}}}
   For example, in PHP:
{{{
$cmd = "cd ../../bin; ./adjust_user_priority --user $user->id --flops $flops --app $app->name";
$x = system($cmd);
if (!is_numeric($x) || (double)$x == 0) {
   ... handle error
}
$priority = (double)$x;
}}}

 * Set job priorities.  For example, use the '''--priority''' option to '''create_work'''.
   Also, if you're creating a batch, set batch.logical_end_time to the priority
   (this is not used for scheduling, but is used in displaying batches on the web).

== Prioritize existing jobs ==

If you have a lot of jobs already queued,
you can prioritize them (and initialize user priorities) by running

{{{
html/ops/submit_init_priority.php
}}}

This script can also be used to reset all priorities to zero.

== Use the right feeder options ==

Run the feeder with the '''--priority_asc''' option.

Notes:
 * Currently this can't be used in combination with the --all_apps option,
  or with homogeneous redundancy.
 * If there are any problems, remove the '''--priority_asc''' option
  and you'll be using FIFO again.