RENICE(1) User Commands RENICE(1)
NAME
renice - alter priority of running processes
SYNOPSIS
renice [--priority|--relative] priority [-g|-p|-u] identifier...
DESCRIPTION
renice alters the scheduling priority of one or more running processes.
The first argument is the priority value to be used. The other arguments
are interpreted as process IDs (by default), process group IDs, user
IDs, or user names. renice'ing a process group causes all processes in
the process group to have their scheduling priority altered. renice'ing
a user causes all processes owned by the user to have their scheduling
priority altered.
If no -n, --priority or --relative option is used, then the priority is
set as absolute.
OPTIONS
-n priority
Specify the absolute or relative (depending on environment variable
POSIXLY_CORRECT) scheduling priority to be used for the process,
process group, or user. Use of the option -n is optional, but when
used, it must be the first argument. See NOTES for more information.
--priority priority
Specify an absolute scheduling priority. Priority is set to the
given value. This is the default, when no option is specified.
--relative priority
Specify a relative scheduling priority. Same as the standard POSIX
-n option. Priority gets incremented/decremented by the given value.
-g, --pgrp
Interpret the succeeding arguments as process group IDs.
-p, --pid
Interpret the succeeding arguments as process IDs (the default).
-u, --user
Interpret the succeeding arguments as usernames or UIDs.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
-V, --version
Display version and exit.
FILES
/etc/passwd
to map user names to user IDs
NOTES
Users other than the superuser may only alter the priority of processes
they own. Furthermore, an unprivileged user can only increase the "nice
value" (i.e., choose a lower priority) and such changes are irreversible
unless (since Linux 2.6.12) the user has a suitable "nice" resource
limit (see ulimit(1p) and getrlimit(2)).
The superuser may alter the priority of any process and set the priority
to any value in the range -20 to 19. Useful priorities are: 19 (the
affected processes will run only when nothing else in the system wants
to), 0 (the "base" scheduling priority), anything negative (to make
things go very fast).
For historical reasons in this implementation, the -n option did not
follow the POSIX specification. Therefore, instead of setting a relative
priority, it sets an absolute priority by default. As this may not be
desirable, this behavior can be controlled by setting the environment
variable POSIXLY_CORRECT to be fully POSIX compliant. See the -n option
for details. See --relative and --priority for options that do not
change behavior depending on environment variables.
HISTORY
The renice command appeared in 4.0BSD.
EXAMPLES
The following command would change the priority of the processes with
PIDs 987 and 32, plus all processes owned by the users daemon and root:
renice +1 987 -u daemon root -p 32
SEE ALSO
nice(1), chrt(1), getpriority(2), setpriority(2), credentials(7),
sched(7)
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker
<https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.
AVAILABILITY
The renice command is part of the util-linux package which can be
downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
<https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
util-linux 2.41 2025-02-26 RENICE(1)
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