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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | CONFORMING TO | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
NICE(2) Linux Programmer's Manual NICE(2)
nice - change process priority
#include <unistd.h>
int nice(int inc);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
nice(): _XOPEN_SOURCE
|| /* Since glibc 2.19: */ _DEFAULT_SOURCE
|| /* Glibc versions <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE
nice() adds inc to the nice value for the calling thread. (A higher
nice value means a low 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.
On success, the new nice value is returned (but see NOTES below). On
error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.
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.
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).)
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.
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).
C library/kernel differences
POSIX.1 specifies that nice() should return the new nice value.
However, the raw Linux system call returns 0 on success. Likewise,
the nice() wrapper function provided in glibc 2.2.3 and earlier
returns 0 on success.
Since glibc 2.2.4, the nice() wrapper function provided by glibc
provides conformance to POSIX.1 by calling getpriority(2) to obtain
the new nice value, which is then returned to the caller.
nice(1), renice(1), fork(2), getpriority(2), getrlimit(2),
setpriority(2), capabilities(7), sched(7)
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 2016-12-12 NICE(2)
Pages that refer to this page: getpriority(2), getrlimit(2), sched_setaffinity(2), sched_setattr(2), sched_setparam(2), sched_setscheduler(2), syscalls(2), capabilities(7), sched(7)