NAME

renice − alter priority of running processes

SYNOPSIS

/etc/renice [ −g ] [ −u ] priority who ... 

DESCRIPTION

Renice can be used to alter the scheduling priority of one or more running processes.  By default, the processes to be affected are specified by their process id’s.  If the −g option is specified, the who parameters are interpreted as process groups and all the processes in the specified process groups have their scheduling priority altered.  If the −u option is indicated, the who parameters are interpreted as user names and all process owned by the user are affected. 

Users other than the super-user may only alter the priority of processes they own, and can only monotonically increase their “nice value” within the range 0 to PRIO_MIN (20).  (This prevents overriding administrative fiats.)  The super-user may alter the priority of any process and set the priority to any value in the range PRIO_MAX (−20) to PRIO_MIN.  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). 

If no who parameter is specified, the current process (alternatively, process group or user) is used. 

FILES

/etc/passwdto map user names to user id’s

SEE ALSO

getpriority(2)

BUGS

If you make the priority very negative, then the process cannot be interrupted.  To regain control you must make the priority greater than zero.  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. 

Sun Release 3.0β  —  Last change: 1 February 1985