.\" $OpenBSD: renice.8,v 1.23 2014/05/23 06:40:57 jmc Exp $ .\" .\" 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. 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. .\" .\" from: @(#)renice.8 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/9/93 .\" .Dd $Mdocdate: May 23 2014 $ .Dt RENICE 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm renice .Nd alter priority of running processes .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm renice .Fl n Ar increment .Oo .Op Fl g .Ar pgrp ... .Oc .Oo .Op Fl p .Ar pid ... .Oc .Oo .Op Fl u .Ar user ... .Oc .Sh DESCRIPTION .Nm alters the scheduling priority of one or more running processes by .Ar increment . Processes may be selected using the parameters .Ar pid (process ID), .Ar pgrp (process group ID), and .Ar user (user name or ID). If no flag is specified, the default is to select by process ID. .Pp Users other than the superuser may only alter the priority of processes they own, and can only monotonically increase their .Dq nice value within the range 0 to .Dv PRIO_MAX (20). (This prevents overriding administrative fiats.) The superuser 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 . .Pp Useful priorities are: 20 (the affected processes will run only when nothing else in the system wants to), 0 (the .Dq base scheduling priority), anything negative (to make things go very fast). .Pp The options are as follows: .Bl -tag -width Ds .It Fl g Ar pgrp ... Alter the scheduling priority of all processes in process group .Ar pgrp . .It Fl n Ar increment A positive or negative decimal integer used to modify the scheduling priority. .It Fl p Ar pid ... Alter the scheduling priority of process .Ar pid . .It Fl u Ar user ... Alter the scheduling priority of all processes belonging to .Ar user , which may be a user name or ID. .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width /etc/passwd -compact .It Pa /etc/passwd for mapping user names to user IDs .El .Sh EXIT STATUS .Ex -std renice .Sh EXAMPLES The following example changes the priority of process IDs 987 and 32, and all processes owned by users daemon and root: .Bd -literal -offset indent # renice -n +1 987 -u daemon root -p 32 .Ed .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr nice 1 , .Xr getpriority 2 , .Xr setpriority 2 .Sh STANDARDS The .Nm utility is compliant with the .St -p1003.1-2008 specification, except the way in which processes are specified differs. .Pp The historical behavior of passing the increment as the first argument is supported for backwards compatibility. .Sh HISTORY The .Nm command appeared in .Bx 4.0 . .Sh BUGS Non-superusers cannot increase scheduling priorities of their own processes, even if they were the ones that decreased the priorities in the first place.