NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | VERSIONS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

IOPRIO_SET(2)             Linux Programmer's Manual            IOPRIO_SET(2)

NAME         top

       ioprio_get, ioprio_set - get/set I/O scheduling class and priority

SYNOPSIS         top

       int ioprio_get(int which, int who);
       int ioprio_set(int which, int who, int ioprio);
       Note: There are no glibc wrappers for these system calls; see NOTES.

DESCRIPTION         top

       The ioprio_get() and ioprio_set() system calls respectively get and
       set the I/O scheduling class and priority of one or more threads.
       The which and who arguments identify the thread(s) on which the
       system calls operate.  The which argument determines how who is
       interpreted, and has one of the following values:
       IOPRIO_WHO_PROCESS
              who is a process ID or thread ID identifying a single process
              or thread.  If who is 0, then operate on the calling thread.
       IOPRIO_WHO_PGRP
              who is a process group ID identifying all the members of a
              process group.  If who is 0, then operate on the process group
              of which the caller is a member.
       IOPRIO_WHO_USER
              who is a user ID identifying all of the processes that have a
              matching real UID.
       If which is specified as IOPRIO_WHO_PGRP or IOPRIO_WHO_USER when
       calling ioprio_get(), and more than one process matches who, then the
       returned priority will be the highest one found among all of the
       matching processes.  One priority is said to be higher than another
       one if it belongs to a higher priority class (IOPRIO_CLASS_RT is the
       highest priority class; IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE is the lowest) or if it
       belongs to the same priority class as the other process but has a
       higher priority level (a lower priority number means a higher
       priority level).
       The ioprio argument given to ioprio_set() is a bit mask that
       specifies both the scheduling class and the priority to be assigned
       to the target process(es).  The following macros are used for
       assembling and dissecting ioprio values:
       IOPRIO_PRIO_VALUE(class, data)
              Given a scheduling class and priority (data), this macro
              combines the two values to produce an ioprio value, which is
              returned as the result of the macro.
       IOPRIO_PRIO_CLASS(mask)
              Given mask (an ioprio value), this macro returns its I/O class
              component, that is, one of the values IOPRIO_CLASS_RT,
              IOPRIO_CLASS_BE, or IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE.
       IOPRIO_PRIO_DATA(mask)
              Given mask (an ioprio value), this macro returns its priority
              (data) component.
       See the NOTES section for more information on scheduling classes and
       priorities, as well as the meaning of specifying ioprio as 0.
       I/O priorities are supported for reads and for synchronous (O_DIRECT,
       O_SYNC) writes.  I/O priorities are not supported for asynchronous
       writes because they are issued outside the context of the program
       dirtying the memory, and thus program-specific priorities do not
       apply.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, ioprio_get() returns the ioprio value of the process with
       highest I/O priority of any of the processes that match the criteria
       specified in which and who.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set to indicate the error.
       On success, ioprio_set() returns 0.  On error, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       EINVAL Invalid value for which or ioprio.  Refer to the NOTES section
              for available scheduler classes and priority levels for
              ioprio.
       EPERM  The calling process does not have the privilege needed to
              assign this ioprio to the specified process(es).  See the
              NOTES section for more information on required privileges for
              ioprio_set().
       ESRCH  No process(es) could be found that matched the specification
              in which and who.

VERSIONS         top

       These system calls have been available on Linux since kernel 2.6.13.

CONFORMING TO         top

       These system calls are Linux-specific.

NOTES         top

       Glibc does not provide a wrapper for these system calls; call them
       using syscall(2).
       Two or more processes or threads can share an I/O context.  This will
       be the case when clone(2) was called with the CLONE_IO flag.
       However, by default, the distinct threads of a process will not share
       the same I/O context.  This means that if you want to change the I/O
       priority of all threads in a process, you may need to call
       ioprio_set() on each of the threads.  The thread ID that you would
       need for this operation is the one that is returned by gettid(2) or
       clone(2).
       These system calls have an effect only when used in conjunction with
       an I/O scheduler that supports I/O priorities.  As at kernel 2.6.17
       the only such scheduler is the Completely Fair Queuing (CFQ) I/O
       scheduler.
       If no I/O scheduler has been set for a thread, then by default the
       I/O priority will follow the CPU nice value (setpriority(2)).  In
       Linux kernels before version 2.6.24, once an I/O priority had been
       set using ioprio_set(), there was no way to reset the I/O scheduling
       behavior to the default.  Since Linux 2.6.24, specifying ioprio as 0
       can be used to reset to the default I/O scheduling behavior.
   Selecting an I/O scheduler
       I/O schedulers are selected on a per-device basis via the special
       file /sys/block/<device>/queue/scheduler.
       One can view the current I/O scheduler via the /sys filesystem.  For
       example, the following command displays a list of all schedulers
       currently loaded in the kernel:
              $ cat /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
              noop anticipatory deadline [cfq]
       The scheduler surrounded by brackets is the one actually in use for
       the device (sda in the example).  Setting another scheduler is done
       by writing the name of the new scheduler to this file.  For example,
       the following command will set the scheduler for the sda device to
       cfq:
              $ su
              Password:
              # echo cfq > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
   The Completely Fair Queuing (CFQ) I/O scheduler
       Since version 3 (also known as CFQ Time Sliced), CFQ implements I/O
       nice levels similar to those of CPU scheduling.  These nice levels
       are grouped into three scheduling classes, each one containing one or
       more priority levels:
       IOPRIO_CLASS_RT (1)
              This is the real-time I/O class.  This scheduling class is
              given higher priority than any other class: processes from
              this class are given first access to the disk every time.
              Thus, this I/O class needs to be used with some care: one I/O
              real-time process can starve the entire system.  Within the
              real-time class, there are 8 levels of class data (priority)
              that determine exactly how much time this process needs the
              disk for on each service.  The highest real-time priority
              level is 0; the lowest is 7.  In the future, this might change
              to be more directly mappable to performance, by passing in a
              desired data rate instead.
       IOPRIO_CLASS_BE (2)
              This is the best-effort scheduling class, which is the default
              for any process that hasn't set a specific I/O priority.  The
              class data (priority) determines how much I/O bandwidth the
              process will get.  Best-effort priority levels are analogous
              to CPU nice values (see getpriority(2)).  The priority level
              determines a priority relative to other processes in the best-
              effort scheduling class.  Priority levels range from 0
              (highest) to 7 (lowest).
       IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE (3)
              This is the idle scheduling class.  Processes running at this
              level get I/O time only when no-one else needs the disk.  The
              idle class has no class data.  Attention is required when
              assigning this priority class to a process, since it may
              become starved if higher priority processes are constantly
              accessing the disk.
       Refer to the kernel source file Documentation/block/ioprio.txt for
       more information on the CFQ I/O Scheduler and an example program.
   Required permissions to set I/O priorities
       Permission to change a process's priority is granted or denied based
       on two criteria:
       Process ownership
              An unprivileged process may set the I/O priority only for a
              process whose real UID matches the real or effective UID of
              the calling process.  A process which has the CAP_SYS_NICE
              capability can change the priority of any process.
       What is the desired priority
              Attempts to set very high priorities (IOPRIO_CLASS_RT) require
              the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability.  Kernel versions up to 2.6.24
              also required CAP_SYS_ADMIN to set a very low priority
              (IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE), but since Linux 2.6.25, this is no longer
              required.
       A call to ioprio_set() must follow both rules, or the call will fail
       with the error EPERM.

BUGS         top

       Glibc does not yet provide a suitable header file defining the
       function prototypes and macros described on this page.  Suitable
       definitions can be found in linux/ioprio.h.

SEE ALSO         top

       ionice(1), getpriority(2), open(2), capabilities(7), cgroups(7)
       Documentation/block/ioprio.txt in the Linux kernel source tree

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 4.12 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux                            2016-05-09                    IOPRIO_SET(2)

Pages that refer to this page: ionice(1)gettid(2)syscalls(2)systemd.exec(5)capabilities(7)cgroups(7)credentials(7)