NAME¶

nice - change process priority

LIBRARY¶

Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS¶

#include <unistd.h>

int nice(int inc);

nice():

    _XOPEN_SOURCE


        || /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE


        || /* glibc <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION¶

nice() adds inc to the nice value for the calling thread. (A higher nice value means a lower priority.)

The range of the nice value is +19 (low priority) to -20 (high priority). Attempts to set a nice value outside the range are clamped to the range.

Traditionally, only a privileged process could lower the nice value (i.e., set a higher priority). However, since Linux 2.6.12, an unprivileged process can decrease the nice value of a target process that has a suitable RLIMIT_NICE soft limit; see getrlimit(2) for details.

RETURN VALUE¶

On success, the new nice value is returned (but see NOTES below). On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set to indicate the error.

A successful call can legitimately return -1. To detect an error, set errno to 0 before the call, and check whether it is nonzero after nice() returns -1.

ERRORS¶

EPERM

The calling process attempted to increase its priority by supplying a negative inc but has insufficient privileges. Under Linux, the CAP_SYS_NICE capability is required. (But see the discussion of the RLIMIT_NICE resource limit in setrlimit(2).)

STANDARDS¶

POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD. However, the raw system call and (g)libc (earlier than glibc 2.2.4) return value is nonstandard, see below.

NOTES¶

For further details on the nice value, see sched(7).

Note: the addition of the "autogroup" feature in Linux 2.6.38 means that the nice value no longer has its traditional effect in many circumstances. For details, see sched(7).

SEE ALSO¶

nice(1), renice(1), fork(2), getpriority(2), getrlimit(2), setpriority(2), capabilities(7), sched(7)