# renice

## NAME



           renice - alter priority of running processes
    


## SYNOPSIS



           **renice**[**-n** |**--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.
    
           By default, _priority_ is understood as an absolute value. But when
           option **--relative** is given, or when option **-n** is given and the
           environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, then _priority_ is
           understood as a relative value.
    


## OPTIONS



           **-n** _priority_ |_delta_
               Specify the absolute scheduling priority (when POSIXLY_CORRECT
               is not set) or a relative priority (when POSIXLY_CORRECT **is**
               set). See **NOTES** below for more details. Using option **-n** is
               optional, but when used, it must be the first argument.
    
           **--priority** _priority_
               Specify the absolute scheduling _priority_ to be used. This is
               the default, when no option is specified.
    
           **--relative** _delta_
               Specify a relative priority. The actual scheduling priority
               gets incremented/decremented by the given _delta_. (This is the
               same as the **-n** option when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.)
    
           **-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**
               Display version and exit.
    


## FILES



           _/etc/passwd_
               to map user names to user IDs
    


## NOTES



           Users other than the superuser may alter the priority only of
           processes they own. Furthermore, an unprivileged user can only
           _increase_ the "nice value" (that is: lower the urgency), and such
           changes are irreversible unless (since Linux 2.6.12) the user has
           a suitable "nice" resource limit (see 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, the **-n** option in this implementation does
           not follow the POSIX specification: instead of setting a **relative**
           priority, it sets an **absolute** priority by default. As this may not
           be desirable, this behavior can be changed by setting the
           environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT, to be fully POSIX compliant.
           See **--relative** and **--priority** for options that do not change
           behavior depending on environment variables.
    


## EXAMPLE



           The following command changes 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**
    


## 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/>. This page is
           part of the _util-linux_ (a random collection of Linux utilities)
           project. Information about the project can be found at 
           ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have a
           bug report for this manual page, send it to
           util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
           project's upstream Git repository
           ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
           2025-08-11. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
           was found in the repository was 2025-08-05.) If you discover any
           rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
           believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
           or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
           COLOPHON (which is _not_ part of the original manual page), send a
           mail to man-pages@man7.org
    
    util-linux 2.42-start-521-ec46  2025-08-09                      _RENICE_(1)
    


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