Unix commands - nice
The nice
command allows you to start a process with a specific priority level. In Unix-like systems, process priorities range from -20
(highest priority) to 19
(lowest priority). By default, a process starts with 0
.
To start a process with a lower priority (giving other processes more CPU time), use:
nice -n 10 some_command
Here, some_command
runs with a niceness of 10
, making it less CPU-hungry compared to others.
If you need to increase priority, a negative value can be used:
sudo nice -n -5 some_command
Since only the superuser can decrease niceness (increase priority), you need sudo
.
renice
If a process is already running, you can change its priority with renice
:
renice -n 5 -p 1234
This modifies the priority of the process with PID 1234
to 5
.