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
           Print 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 at
       <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 2.40                   2024-04-01                         RENICE(1)