.\" Copyright (c) 1983, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by the University of .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)renice.8 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/9/93 .\" .Dd November 2010 " " .Dt RENICE(1) "" "User Commands" .Os util-linux .Sh NAME .Nm renice .Nd alter priority of running processes .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm renice .Op Fl n .Ar priority .Oo .Op Fl p .Ar pid ... .Oc .Oo .Op Fl g .Ar pgrp ... .Oc .Oo .Op Fl u .Ar user ... .Oc .Nm renice .Fl h | Fl v .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm Renice alters the scheduling priority of one or more running processes. The following .Ar who parameters are interpreted as process ID's, process group ID's, or user names. .Nm Renice Ns 'ing a process group causes all processes in the process group to have their scheduling priority altered. .Nm Renice Ns 'ing a user causes all processes owned by the user to have their scheduling priority altered. By default, the processes to be affected are specified by their process ID's. .Pp Options supported by .Nm renice : .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl n, Fl Fl priority The scheduling .Ar priority of the process, process group, or user. .It Fl g, Fl Fl pgrp Force .Ar who parameters to be interpreted as process group ID's. .It Fl u, Fl Fl user Force the .Ar who parameters to be interpreted as user names. .It Fl p, Fl Fl pid Resets the .Ar who interpretation to be (the default) process ID's. .It Fl v, Fl Fl version Print version. .It Fl h, Fl Fl help Print help. .El .Pp For example, .Bd -literal -offset renice +1 987 -u daemon root -p 32 .Ed .Pp would change the priority of process ID's 987 and 32, and all processes owned by users daemon and root. .Pp Users other than the super-user may only alter the priority of processes they own, and can only monotonically increase their ``nice value'' (for security reasons) within the range 0 to .Dv PRIO_MAX (20), unless a nice resource limit is set (Linux 2.6.12 and higher). The super-user may alter the priority of any process and set the priority to any value in the range .Dv PRIO_MIN (\-20) to .Dv PRIO_MAX . Useful priorities are: 20 (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). .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /etc/passwd -compact .It Pa /etc/passwd to map user names to user ID's .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr getpriority 2 , .Xr setpriority 2 .Sh BUGS Non super-users can not increase scheduling priorities of their own processes, even if they were the ones that decreased the priorities in the first place. .br The Linux kernel (at least version 2.0.0) and linux libc (at least version 5.2.18) does not agree entirely on what the specifics of the systemcall interface to set nice values is. Thus causes renice to report bogus previous nice values. .Sh HISTORY The .Nm command appeared in .Bx 4.0 . .Sh AVAILABILITY The renice command is part of the util-linux package and is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.