Ubuntu Manpage: niceload - slow down a program when the load average is above a certain limit

Provided by: parallel_20240222+ds-2_all

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>.

AUTHOR

       Copyright (C) 2004-11-19 Ole Tange, http://ole.tange.dk

       Copyright (C) 2005-2010 Ole Tange, http://ole.tange.dk

       Copyright (C) 2010-2024 Ole Tange, http://ole.tange.dk and Free Software Foundation, Inc.

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
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       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.

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DEPENDENCIES

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