(BSD System Compatibility)

renice(1Mbsd)

renice -- (BSD) alter priority of running processes

Synopsis

   /usr/ucb/renice priority pid ...

   /usr/ucb/renice priority [-p pid ...] [-g pgrp ...] [-u username ...]

Description

The renice command alters the scheduling priority of one or more running processes. By default, the processes to be affected are specified by their process IDs. priority is the new priority value.

Command options

-p pid ...: Specify a list of process IDs.
-g pgrp ...: Specify a list of process group IDs. The processes in the specified process groups have their scheduling priority altered.
-u user ...: Specify a list of user IDs or usernames. All processes owned by each user have their scheduling altered.

Users other than the privileged user may only alter the priority of processes they own, and can only monotonically increase their nice value within the range 0 to 20. This prevents overriding administrative fiats. The privileged user may alter the priority of any process and set the priority to any value in the range -20 to 20. Useful priorities are: 19 (the affected processes will run only when nothing else in the system wants to), 0 (the base scheduling priority) and any negative value (to make things go very fast).

If only the priority is specified, the current process (alternatively, process group or user) is used.

FILES

/etc/passwd: map user names to user ID's

References

priocntl(1)

Notices

If you make the priority very negative, then the process cannot be interrupted.

To regain control you must make the priority greater than zero.

Users other than the privileged user cannot increase scheduling priorities of their own processes, even if they were the ones that decreased the priorities in the first place.

The priocntl command subsumes the function of renice.