I have many configurations that require a resource that I've defined. Often I observe that some older jobs get starved from acquiring the resource when competing configurations are triggered at later times. All configurations have the same priority.

That is, say I have configurations A, B, and C and all of them require resource X. When A, B and C are queued at the same time, only one of them will acquire resource X and the others will wait until the resource is released. However, if A, B or C are queued again before the old queued jobs acquire the resource, some of the older queued jobs will not acquire the resource before the newer queued jobs.

For example, A, B, and C are queued at time 0. Let's call them A0, B0, C0. C0 aquires the resource, runs and then releases the resource. Next, A0 acquires the resource (B0 still waiting). While A0 is holding the resource, C gets queued again (let's call it C1). Then, A0 releases the resource. Next, C1 acquires the resource and B0 is STILL waiting.

In extreme cases, I've observed that queued jobs wait for hours to acquire the resource because new competing jobs continue to get queued.

It seems resources should be given to oldest running job when other jobs are competing for it.