GNU niceload

NAMEniceload - slow down a program when the load average is above a certain limit

SYNOPSIS
niceload [-v] [-h] [-n nice] [-I io] [-L load] [-M mem] [-N] [--sensor program] [-t time] [-s time|-f factor] (command | -p PID [-p PID ...] | --prg program )DESCRIPTION
GNU niceload will slow down a program when the load average (or other system activity) is above acertain limit. When the limit is reached the program will be suspended for some time. Then resumed
again for some time. Then the load average is checked again and we start over.
Instead of load average niceload can also look at disk I/O, amount of free memory, or swapping
activity.
If the load is 3.00 then the default settings will run a program like this:run 1 second, suspend (3.00-1.00) seconds, run 1 second, suspend (3.00-1.00) seconds, run 1second, ...

OPTIONS-B--battery
Suspend if the system is running on battery. Shorthand for: -l -1 --sensor 'cat/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/status /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state 2>/dev/null |grep -i -q discharging; echo $?'-f FACTOR--factor FACTOR
Suspend time factor. Dynamically set -s as amount over limit * factor. Default is 1.
-H--hard
Hard limit. --hard will suspend the process until the system is under the limits. The
default is --soft.
--io iolimit-I iolimit
Limit for I/O. The amount of disk I/O will be computed as a value 0 - 10, where 0 is
no I/O and 10 is at least one disk is 100% saturated.
--io will set both --start-io and --run-io.
--load loadlimit-L loadlimit
Limit for load average.
--load will set both --start-load and --run-load.
--mem memlimit-M memlimit
Limit for free memory. This is the amount of bytes available as free + cache. This
limit is treated opposite other limits: If the system is above the limit the program will
run, if it is below the limit the program will stop
memlimit can be postfixed with K, M, G, T, or P which would multiply the size with1024, 1048576, 1073741824, or 1099511627776 respectively.
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GNU niceload--mem will set both --start-mem and --run-mem.
--noswap-NNo swapping. If the system is swapping both in and out it is a good indication thatthe system is memory stressed.
--noswap is over limit if the system is swapping both in and out.
--noswap will set both --start-noswap and --run-noswap.
--net
Shorthand for --nethops 3.
--nethops h
Network nice. Pause if the internet connection is overloaded.
niceload finds a router h hops closer to the internet. It pings this every second. If
the latency is more than 50% bigger than the median, it is regarded as being overthe limit.
--nethops can be combined with --hard. Without --hard the program may be able toqueue up so much traffic that it will take longer than the --suspend time to clear it.
--hard is useful for traffic that does not break by being suspended for a longer time.
--nethops can be combined with a high --suspend. This way a program can beallowed to do a bit of traffic now and then. This is useful to keep the connection alive.
-n niceness--nice nicenessSets niceness. See nice(1).
-p PID[,PID]--pid PID[,PID]
Process IDs of processes to suspend. You can specify multiple process IDs withmultiple -p PID or by separating the PIDs with comma.
--prg program--program program
Name of running program to suspend. You can specify multiple programs withmultiple --prg program. If no processes with the name program is found, niceload
with search for substrings containing program.
--quote-q
Quote the command line. Useful if the command contains chars like *, $, >, and "that should not be interpreted by the shell.
--run-io iolimit--ri iolimit--run-load loadlimit--rl loadlimit--run-mem memlimit--rm memlimit
Run limit. The running program will be slowed down if the system is above the limit.
See: --io, --load, --mem, --noswap.

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GNU niceload--sensor sensor program
Read sensor. Use sensor program to read a sensor.
This will keep the CPU temperature below 80 deg C on GNU/Linux:
niceload -l 80000 -f 0.001 --sensor 'sort -n/sys/devices/platform/coretemp*/temp*_input' gzip *This will stop if the disk space < 100000.
niceload -H -l -100000 --sensor "df . | awk '{ print \$4 }'"echo--start-io iolimit--si iolimit--start-load loadlimit--sl loadlimit--start-mem memlimit--sm memlimit
Start limit. The program will not start until the system is below the limit. See: --io,--load, --mem, --noswap.
--soft-S
Soft limit. niceload will suspend a process for a while and then let it run for a second
thus only slowing down a process while the system is over one of the given limits.
This is the default.
--suspend SEC-s SEC
Suspend time. Suspend the command this many seconds when the max load
average is reached.
--recheck SEC-t SEC
Recheck load time. Sleep SEC seconds before checking load again. Default is 1
second.
--verbose-v
Verbose. Print some extra output on what is happening. Use -v until you know what
your are doing.

EXAMPLE: See niceload in action
In terminal 1 run: top
In terminal 2 run:niceload -q perl -e '$|=1;do{$l==$r or print "."; $l=$r}until(($r=time-$^T)>50)'
This will print a '.' every second for 50 seconds and eat a lot of CPU. When the load rises to 1.0 theprocess is suspended.

EXAMPLE: Run updatedb
Running updatedb can often starve the system for disk I/O and thus result in a high load.

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GNU niceload
Run updatedb but suspend updatedb if the load is above 2.00:
niceload -L 2 updatedb

EXAMPLE: Run rsync
rsync can, just like updatedb, starve the system for disk I/O and thus result in a high load.
Run rsync but keep load below 3.4. If load reaches 7 sleep for (7-3.4)*12 seconds:
niceload -L 3.4 -f 12 rsync -Ha /home/ /backup/home/

EXAMPLE: Ensure enough disk cache
Assume the program foo uses 2 GB files intensively. foo will run fast if the files are in disk cache andbe slow as a crawl if they are not in the cache.
To ensure 2 GB are reserved for disk cache run:niceload --hard --run-mem 2g foo
This will not guarantee that the 2 GB memory will be used for the files for foo, but it will stop foo if thememory for disk cache is too low.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
None. In future versions $NICELOAD will be able to contain default settings.

EXIT STATUS
Exit status should be the same as the command being run (untested).

REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <bug-parallel@gnu.org>.

AUTHOR
Copyright (C) 2004-11-19 Ole Tange, http://ole.tange.dk
Copyright (C) 2005-2010 Ole Tange, http://ole.tange.dk
Copyright (C) 2010-2024 Ole Tange, http://ole.tange.dk and Free Software Foundation, Inc.

LICENSEThis program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU
General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of theLicense, or at your option any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; withouteven the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not,see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Documentation license IPermission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this documentation under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A
copy of the license is included in the file LICENSES/GFDL-1.3-or-later.txt.

Documentation license II
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GNU niceload
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DEPENDENCIES
GNU niceload uses Perl, and the Perl modules POSIX, and Getopt::Long.

SEE ALSO
parallel(1), nice(1), uptime(1)Page 5