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/>.