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Chapter 39. Setting the priority for a process with the chrt utility

You can set the priority for a process using the chrt utility.

Prerequisites

  • You have administrator privileges.

The chrt utility checks and adjusts scheduler policies and priorities. It can start new processes with the desired properties, or change the properties of a running process.

Procedure

  • To set the scheduling policy of a process, run the chrt command with the appropriate command options and parameters. In the following example, the process ID affected by the command is 1000, and the priority (-p) is 50. 

    # chrt -f -p 50 1000
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    To start an application with a specified scheduling policy and priority, add the name of the application, and the path to it, if necessary, along with the attributes. 

    # chrt -r -p 50 /bin/my-app
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    For more information about the chrt utility options, see The chrt utility options.

39.2. The chrt utility options
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The chrt utility options include command options and parameters specifying the process and priority for the command.

Policy options

-f
Sets the scheduler policy to SCHED_FIFO.
-o
Sets the scheduler policy to SCHED_OTHER.
-r
Sets the scheduler policy to SCHED_RR (round robin).
-d
Sets the scheduler policy to SCHED_DEADLINE.
-p n

Sets the priority of the process to n.

When setting a process to SCHED_DEADLINE, you must specify the runtime, deadline, and period parameters.

For example: 

# chrt -d --sched-runtime 5000000 --sched-deadline 10000000 --sched-period 16666666 0 video_processing_tool
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where

  • --sched-runtime 5000000 is the run time in nanoseconds.
  • --sched-deadline 10000000 is the relative deadline in nanoseconds.
  • --sched-period 16666666 is the period in nanoseconds.
  • 0 is a placeholder for unused priority required by the chrt command.
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