1RENICE(1) User Commands RENICE(1)
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6 renice - alter priority of running processes
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9 renice [--priority|--relative] priority [-g|-p|-u] identifier...
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12 renice alters the scheduling priority of one or more running processes.
13 The first argument is the priority value to be used. The other
14 arguments are interpreted as process IDs (by default), process group
15 IDs, user IDs, or user names. renice'ing a process group causes all
16 processes in the process group to have their scheduling priority
17 altered. renice'ing a user causes all processes owned by the user to
18 have their scheduling priority altered.
19 If no -n, --priority or --relative option is used, then the priority is
21 set as absolute.
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24 -n priority
25 Specify the absolute or relative (depending on environment variable
26 POSIXLY_CORRECT) scheduling priority to be used for the process,
27 process group, or user. Use of the option -n is optional, but when
28 used, it must be the first argument. See NOTES for more
29 information.
30 --priority priority
32 Specify an absolute scheduling priority. Priority is set to the
33 given value. This is the default, when no option is specified.
34 --relative priority
36 Specify a relative scheduling priority. Same as the standard POSIX
37 -n option. Priority gets incremented/decremented by the given
38 value.
39 -g, --pgrp
41 Interpret the succeeding arguments as process group IDs.
42 -p, --pid
44 Interpret the succeeding arguments as process IDs (the default).
45 -u, --user
47 Interpret the succeeding arguments as usernames or UIDs.
48 -h, --help
50 Display help text and exit.
51 -V, --version
53 Print version and exit.
54
56 /etc/passwd
57 to map user names to user IDs
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60 Users other than the superuser may only alter the priority of processes
61 they own. Furthermore, an unprivileged user can only increase the "nice
62 value" (i.e., choose a lower priority) and such changes are
63 irreversible unless (since Linux 2.6.12) the user has a suitable "nice"
64 resource limit (see ulimit(1p) and getrlimit(2)).
65 The superuser may alter the priority of any process and set the
67 priority to any value in the range -20 to 19. Useful priorities are: 19
68 (the affected processes will run only when nothing else in the system
69 wants to), 0 (the "base" scheduling priority), anything negative (to
70 make things go very fast).
71 For historical reasons in this implementation, the -n option did not
73 follow the POSIX specification. Therefore, instead of setting a
74 relative priority, it sets an absolute priority by default. As this may
75 not be desirable, this behavior can be controlled by setting the
76 environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT to be fully POSIX compliant. See
77 the -n option for details. See --relative and --priority for options
78 that do not change behavior depending on environment variables.
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81 The renice command appeared in 4.0BSD.
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84 The following command would change the priority of the processes with
85 PIDs 987 and 32, plus all processes owned by the users daemon and root:
86 renice +1 987 -u daemon root -p 32
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90 nice(1), chrt(1), getpriority(2), setpriority(2), credentials(7),
91 sched(7)
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94 For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
95 https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.
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98 The renice command is part of the util-linux package which can be
99 downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
100 <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
101util-linux 2.39.2 2023-06-14 RENICE(1)