Three wrappers to run commands without impacting the rest of the system
François Marier names 3 tools to execute other commands with lower priorities on a Linux system:
- nice
- Runs at a "nicer" (i.e. lower) CPU priority (a UNIX classic that everybody knows).
- ionice
- Sets the I/O priority. Interesting options are
-c3(needs root) or-n7. Only useful if you are using the CFQ scheduler. - nocache
- Avoids storing files into the file cache, leaving it ready for other running processes.
Example in a crontab:
0 0 * * * nocache ionice nice /path/to/backup.sh