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NICELOAD(1) parallel NICELOAD(1)

NAME
niceload - slow down a program when the load average is above a certain
limit

SYNOPSIS
niceload [-v] [-h] [-n nice] [-I io] [-L load] [-M mem] [-N] [--sensor
program] [-t time] [-s time|-f factor] ( command | -p PID [-p PID ...]
| --prg program )

DESCRIPTION
GNU niceload will slow down a program when the load average (or other
system activity) is above a certain limit. When the limit is reached
the program will be suspended for some time. Then resumed again for
some time. Then the load average is checked again and we start over.

Instead of load average niceload can also look at disk I/O, amount of
free memory, or swapping activity.

If the load is 3.00 then the default settings will run a program like
this:

run 1 second, suspend (3.00-1.00) seconds, run 1 second, suspend
(3.00-1.00) seconds, run 1 second, ...

OPTIONS
-B
--battery
Suspend if the system is running on battery. Shorthand for: -l
-1 --sensor 'cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/status
/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state 2>/dev/null | grep -i -q
discharging; echo $?'

-f FACTOR
--factor FACTOR
Suspend time factor. Dynamically set -s as amount over limit *
factor. Default is 1.

-H
--hard Hard limit. --hard will suspend the process until the system
is under the limits. The default is --soft.

--io iolimit
-I iolimit
Limit for I/O. The amount of disk I/O will be computed as a
value 0 - 10, where 0 is no I/O and 10 is at least one disk is
100% saturated.

--io will set both --start-io and --run-io.

--load loadlimit
-L loadlimit
Limit for load average.

--load will set both --start-load and --run-load.

--mem memlimit
-M memlimit
Limit for free memory. This is the amount of bytes available
as free + cache. This limit is treated opposite other limits:
If the system is above the limit the program will run, if it
is below the limit the program will stop

memlimit can be postfixed with K, M, G, T, or P which would
multiply the size with 1024, 1048576, 1073741824, or
1099511627776 respectively.

--mem will set both --start-mem and --run-mem.

--noswap
-N No swapping. If the system is swapping both in and out it is a
good indication that the system is memory stressed.

--noswap is over limit if the system is swapping both in and
out.

--noswap will set both --start-noswap and --run-noswap.

--net Shorthand for --nethops 3.

--nethops h
Network nice. Pause if the internet connection is overloaded.

niceload finds a router h hops closer to the internet. It
pings this every second. If the latency is more than 50%
bigger than the median, it is regarded as being over the
limit.

--nethops can be combined with --hard. Without --hard the
program may be able to queue up so much traffic that it will
take longer than the --suspend time to clear it. --hard is
useful for traffic that does not break by being suspended for
a longer time.

--nethops can be combined with a high --suspend. This way a
program can be allowed to do a bit of traffic now and then.
This is useful to keep the connection alive.

-n niceness
--nice niceness
Sets niceness. See nice(1).

-p PID[,PID]
--pid PID[,PID]
Process IDs of processes to suspend. You can specify multiple
process IDs with multiple -p PID or by separating the PIDs
with comma.

--prg program
--program program
Name of running program to suspend. You can specify multiple
programs with multiple --prg program. If no processes with the
name program is found, niceload with search for substrings
containing program.

--quote
-q Quote the command line. Useful if the command contains chars
like *, $, >, and " that should not be interpreted by the
shell.

--run-io iolimit
--ri iolimit
--run-load loadlimit
--rl loadlimit
--run-mem memlimit
--rm memlimit
Run limit. The running program will be slowed down if the
system is above the limit. See: --io, --load, --mem, --noswap.

--sensor sensor program
Read sensor. Use sensor program to read a sensor.

This will keep the CPU temperature below 80 deg C on
GNU/Linux:

niceload -l 80000 -f 0.001 --sensor 'sort -n /sys/devices/platform/coretemp*/temp*_input' gzip *

This will stop if the disk space < 100000.

niceload -H -l -100000 --sensor "df . | awk '{ print \$4 }'" echo

--start-io iolimit
--si iolimit
--start-load loadlimit
--sl loadlimit
--start-mem memlimit
--sm memlimit
Start limit. The program will not start until the system is
below the limit. See: --io, --load, --mem, --noswap.

--soft
-S Soft limit. niceload will suspend a process for a while and
then let it run for a second thus only slowing down a process
while the system is over one of the given limits. This is the
default.

--suspend SEC
-s SEC Suspend time. Suspend the command this many seconds when the
max load average is reached.

--recheck SEC
-t SEC Recheck load time. Sleep SEC seconds before checking load
again. Default is 1 second.

--verbose
-v Verbose. Print some extra output on what is happening. Use -v
until you know what your are doing.

EXAMPLE: See niceload in action
In terminal 1 run: top

In terminal 2 run:

niceload -q perl -e '$|=1;do{$l==$r or print ".";
$l=$r}until(($r=time-$^T)>50)'

This will print a '.' every second for 50 seconds and eat a lot of CPU.
When the load rises to 1.0 the process is suspended.

EXAMPLE: Run updatedb
Running updatedb can often starve the system for disk I/O and thus
result in a high load.

Run updatedb but suspend updatedb if the load is above 2.00:

niceload -L 2 updatedb

EXAMPLE: Run rsync
rsync can, just like updatedb, starve the system for disk I/O and thus
result in a high load.

Run rsync but keep load below 3.4. If load reaches 7 sleep for
(7-3.4)*12 seconds:

niceload -L 3.4 -f 12 rsync -Ha /home/ /backup/home/

EXAMPLE: Ensure enough disk cache
Assume the program foo uses 2 GB files intensively. foo will run fast
if the files are in disk cache and be slow as a crawl if they are not
in the cache.

To ensure 2 GB are reserved for disk cache run:

niceload --hard --run-mem 2g foo

This will not guarantee that the 2 GB memory will be used for the files
for foo, but it will stop foo if the memory for disk cache is too low.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
None. In future versions $NICELOAD will be able to contain default
settings.

EXIT STATUS
Exit status should be the same as the command being run (untested).

REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to <bug-parallel@gnu.org>.

LICENSE
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or at your
option any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Documentation license I
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
documentation under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and
with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the
file LICENSES/GFDL-1.3-or-later.txt.

Documentation license II
You are free:

to Share to copy, distribute and transmit the work

to Remix to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution
You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the
author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they
endorse you or your use of the work).

Share Alike
If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may
distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or
a compatible license.

With the understanding that:

Waiver Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get
permission from the copyright holder.

Public Domain
Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain
under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the
license.

Other Rights
In no way are any of the following rights affected by the
license:

• Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable
copyright exceptions and limitations;

• The author's moral rights;

• Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or
in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy
rights.

Notice For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others
the license terms of this work.

A copy of the full license is included in the file as
LICENCES/CC-BY-SA-4.0.txt

DEPENDENCIES
GNU niceload uses Perl, and the Perl modules POSIX, and Getopt::Long.

SEE ALSO
parallel(1), nice(1), uptime(1)

20250122 2025-01-21 NICELOAD(1)

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<https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=niceload&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+Ports+14.3.quarterly>

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