Process priority: nice and renice

A process's priority is set by its nice value, from -20 (greediest) to 19 (most yielding). A normal user can only lower the priority.

nice -n 10 long-task &     # start at a lower priority
ps -o pid,ni,comm -u student
renice 15 -p 1234         # change a running process

The higher the nice value, the more readily the process yields the CPU. Only root can raise priority (a negative nice).

Used in

You need this in the lesson Processes and jobs.