snice (1) Linux Manual Page
skill, snice – send a signal or report process status
Synopsis
skill [signal] [options] expressionsnice [new priority] [options] expression
Description
These tools are obsolete and unportable. The command syntax is poorly defined. Consider using the killall, pkill, and pgrep commands instead.The default signal for skill is TERM. Use -l or -L to list available signals. Particularly useful signals include HUP, INT, KILL, STOP, CONT, and 0. Alternate signals may be specified in three ways: -9 -SIGKILL -KILL.
The default priority for snice is +4. Priority numbers range from +20 (slowest) to -20 (fastest). Negative priority numbers are restricted to administrative users.
Options
- -f, –fast
- Fast mode. This option has not been implemented.
- -i, –interactive
- Interactive use. You will be asked to approve each action.
- -l, –list
- List all signal names.
- -L, –table
- List all signal names in a nice table.
- -n, –no-action
- No action; perform a simulation of events that would occur but do not actually change the system.
- -v, –verbose
- Verbose; explain what is being done.
- -w, –warnings
- Enable warnings. This option has not been implemented.
- -h, –help
- Display help text and exit.
- -V, –version
- Display version information.
Process Selection Options
Selection criteria can be: terminal, user, pid, command. The options below may be used to ensure correct interpretation.- -t, –tty tty
- The next expression is a terminal (tty or pty).
- -u, –user user
- The next expression is a username.
- -p, –pid pid
- The next expression is a process ID number.
- -c, –command command
- The next expression is a command name.
- –ns pid
- Match the processes that belong to the same namespace as pid.
- –nslist ns/,,…/
- list which namespaces will be considered for the –ns option. Available namespaces: ipc, mnt, net, pid, user, uts.
Signals
The behavior of signals is explained in signal(7) manual page.Examples
- snice -c seti -c crack +7
- Slow down seti and crack commands.
- skill -KILL -t /dev/pts/*
- Kill users on PTY devices.
- skill -STOP -u viro -u lm -u davem
- Stop three users.