Priority of a Process in AIX

Process refers to a program under a execution.

Process can be executed on foregroud and background.

Priority of a process executed in foreground is 20.

Priority of a process executed in background is 24.

The priority of process can be changed with the nice command.

The range of priority of a proces is +20 to -19.

Smaller the value favored high.

# vmstat 2 5 : Command executed with the priority value of 20.

# nice -n 5 vmstat 2 5 : Command executed with the priority value of 25+5 = 25 (less favored).

# nice -n -5 vmstat 2 5 : Command executed with the priority value of 20-5 = 15 (high favored).

The process could have priority which can be a fixed or non-fixed (dynamic).

Fixed priority could be assigned to a process using the varible,

retcode=setpri(Process ID, priority value).

# ps -lu <user> : Command shows the priority of all the process owned by the user.