Changing the Priority of a Timesharing Process (nice)

The nice command is only supported for backward compatibility to previous Solaris releases. The priocntl command provides more flexibility in managing processes.

The priority of a process is determined by the policies of its scheduling class, and by its nice number. Each timesharing process has a global priority. The global priority is calculated by adding the user-supplied priority, which can be influenced by the nice or priocntl commands, and the system-calculated priority.

The execution priority number of a process is assigned by the operating system, and is determined by several factors, including its scheduling class, how much CPU time it has used, and in the case of a timesharing process, its nice number.

Each timesharing process starts with a default nice number, which it inherits from its parent process. The nice number is shown in the NI column of the ps report.

A user can lower the priority of a process by increasing its user-supplied priority. But only superuser can lower a nice number to increase the priority of a process. This restriction prevents users from increasing the priorities of their own processes, thereby monopolizing a greater share of the CPU.

The nice numbers range between 0 and +39, with 0 representing the highest priority. The default nice value for each timesharing process is 20. Two versions of the command are available, the standard version, /usr/bin/nice, and the C shell built-in command.