---
name: "renice"
section: "8"
platform: "linux"
package: "bsdutils"
version: "4.4.1.1"
release: "Debian 2.1 (Slink)"
platforms: ["linux", "freebsd", "openbsd", "macos"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/renice/8"
---

# renice(8)

alter priority of running processes

## NAME

**renice** – alter priority of running processes

## SYNOPSIS

**renice** *priority*\[ \[**-p**\] *pid* *...*\]\[ \[**-g**\] *pgrp* *...*\]\[ \[**-u**\] *user* *...*\]

## DESCRIPTION

**Renice** alters the  scheduling priority of one or more running processes. The following *who* parameters are interpreted as process ID's, process group ID's, 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, the processes to be affected are specified by their process ID's.

Options supported by **renice**:

- **-g**

  Force  *who* parameters to be interpreted as process group ID's.

- **-u**

  Force the *who* parameters to be interpreted as user names.

- **-p**

  Resets the *who* interpretation to be (the default) process ID's.

For example,

```
renice +1 987 -u daemon root -p 32
```

would change the priority of process ID's 987 and 32, and all processes owned by users daemon and root.

Users other than the super-user may only alter the priority of processes they own, and can only monotonically increase their \`\`nice value'' within the range 0 to PRIO\_MAX (20). (This prevents overriding administrative fiats.) The super-user may alter the priority of any process and set the priority to any value in the range PRIO\_MIN (-20) to PRIO\_MAX. Useful priorities are: 20 (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).

## FILES

- */etc/passwd*

  to map user names to user ID's

## SEE ALSO

[getpriority(2)](/getpriority/2.md), [setpriority(2)](/setpriority/2.md)

## BUGS

Non super-users can not increase scheduling priorities of their own processes, even if they were the ones that decreased the priorities in the first place.

## HISTORY

The **renice** command appeared in 4.0BSD.