Hello Dan, On 6/24/20 1:17 PM, Dan Kenigsberg wrote: > On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 1:16 PM Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) > <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> Hi Dan, >> >> On 6/11/20 7:13 AM, Dan Kenigsberg wrote: >>> Anyone can raise the niceness value. Only lowering requires CAP_SYS_NICE. >>> >>> $ nice -n +2 nice >>> 2 >>> $ nice -n -2 nice >>> nice: cannot set niceness: Permission denied >>> 0 >>> $ sudo nice -n -2 nice >>> -2 >>> >>> Signed-off-by: Dan Kenigsberg <danken@xxxxxxxxxx> >> >> As I'm sure you're aware, the meaning of the nice value >> is always a source of confusion! In writing the original text, >> my intent was that the reader would understand that [higher nice >> value] == [more negative nice value], but obviously that that >> could be ambiguous. > > Indeed, I'm aware of the old confusion. Some of it stems from people > thinking about this value as a priority. However, it was named > "niceness" because higher value means lesser cpu time. I think that > the man page language should stick to the code and command line > arguments (`nice -n +2` makes the value higher and the process less > likely to run) > >> >>> --- >>> man7/capabilities.7 | 2 +- >>> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) >>> >>> diff --git a/man7/capabilities.7 b/man7/capabilities.7 >>> index 6254c0ac0..64a9f8e34 100644 >>> --- a/man7/capabilities.7 >>> +++ b/man7/capabilities.7 >>> @@ -527,7 +527,7 @@ drop capabilities from the system-wide capability >>> bounding set. >>> .PD 0 >>> .RS >>> .IP * 2 >>> -Raise process nice value >>> +Lower process nice value >>> .RB ( nice (2), >>> .BR setpriority (2)) >>> and change the nice value for arbitrary processes; >> >> I instead applied a differnt patch, as below. >> I hope it works for you. >> >> Cheers, >> >> Michael >> >> diff --git a/man7/capabilities.7 b/man7/capabilities.7 >> index 8f212bead..bf9949ad2 100644 >> --- a/man7/capabilities.7 >> +++ b/man7/capabilities.7 >> @@ -556,7 +556,7 @@ drop capabilities from the system-wide capability bounding set. >> .PD 0 >> .RS >> .IP * 2 >> -Raise process nice value >> +Give process a higher (i.e., more negative) nice value > > To me, this suggestion adds to the confusion. Higher numbers are > typically considered "less negative", not more. > How about saying: > > Lower process nice value (i.e. make it less nice to other processes) > >> .RB ( nice (2), >> .BR setpriority (2)) >> and change the nice value for arbitrary processes; You know what, I think I should have just gone with your original proposal! And now I've done that. If people are confused, they can read nice(2) and sched(7). Thanks, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
