Cpulimit is a tool which limits the CPU usage of a process (expressed in percentage, not in CPU time). It is useful to control batch jobs, when you don't want them to eat too many CPU cycles. The goal is prevent a process from running for more than a specified time ratio. It does not change the nice value or other scheduling priority settings, but the real CPU usage. Also, it is able to adapt itself to the overall system load, dynamically and quickly. The control of the used CPU amount is done sending SIGSTOP and SIGCONT POSIX signals to processes. All the children processes and threads of the specified process will share the same percentage of CPU.
Questions tagged [cpulimit]
18 questions
17
votes
3 answers
Is it possible to limit how much CPU power a process can take?
I'm wondering, is there way to tell a process how much processor power it can take?
The problem is I'm converting video with Arista (video converter) and I'm annoyed by the fan running like crazy, when I look at the task monitor, it's taking over…
equivalent8
- 293
- 2
- 8
14
votes
2 answers
Why can't "cpulimit" limit chromium browser?
Due to its high CPU usage i want to limit Chromium web browser by cpulimit and use terminal to run:
cpulimit -l 30 -- chromium --incognito
but it does not limit CPU usage as expected (i.e. to maximum to 30%). It again uses 100%. Why? What am I…
user458762
5
votes
1 answer
How to limit CPU usage with systemd-run
I have a buggy program which uses 100% CPU even when it's idle. Since fixing it isn't practical at the moment, I'd like to just limit it to be able to use no more than 10% CPU. However no matter what I do, the process always chews up 100% of one…
Malvineous
- 6,524
- 5
- 52
- 76
3
votes
2 answers
Stop specific processes from heating up my system's CPU
I have a process doing some computation the whole time. It causes my system's CPU to heat up and the fan to spin faster.
I want this process to run, but with a low priority. I don't want my system to heat up and my fan to spin because of it. Is it…
peoro
- 3,658
- 3
- 32
- 32
3
votes
1 answer
cpulimit is not actually limiting CPU usage
I'm calling cpulimit from cron:
00 16 * * * /usr/bin/cpulimit --limit 20 /bin/sh /media/storage/sqlbackup/backups.sh
When the job kicks off, the CPU spikes and alerts as it always has, with no actual identifiable limit having taken place. The job…
Kahn
- 1,652
- 2
- 19
- 36
2
votes
1 answer
How can I apply cpu and memory limit to "Web Content"?
I tried to put memory limit on programs, by using their desktop shortcuts in order to apply the same limit for their child process too.
I found that "Web Content" is a separate process in what is web content and it uses high memory not only in my…
user458762
1
vote
0 answers
How do I make a Linux process believe it is using 100% of CPU while limiting it with a cgroup?
Cgroups allow artificially limiting CPU time available to a process using cpu.cfs_quota_us and cpu.cfs_period_us parameters.
This however results in a discrepancy when the program monitors its CPU usage (e.g. by comparing wall time and CPU time) and…
Vi.
- 5,528
- 7
- 34
- 68
1
vote
0 answers
Linux shell wrapper to run program with low system resources?
There's nice and renice to lower priority of a process, cpulimit to lets say 30% maximum, taskset to limit to 1 core, ionice. Each of these tools has a different syntax. Specifically cpulimit seems harder to master. Syntax isn't trivial. Writing…
adrelanos
- 1,786
- 7
- 29
- 56
1
vote
1 answer
Can I run BOINC using only a little computing power?
I found that I can help find scientific results using BOINC. As I tried, it used so much cpu or memory that my desktop hanged. Is there a way to tell Ubuntu that run BOINC but use at most, say 20% of CPU power or memory?
boincuser
- 11
- 2
1
vote
0 answers
Is there a way to make my computers fans turn on instead of the CPU dropping frequency? I'm using Linux Mint 19.3
My computer, for whatever reason, will lower CPU usage when it gets hot instead of turning on its fan. I don't know if it's a driver issue or something else. Thanks!
The above is at 80 degrees Celcius.
T1 L.
- 11
- 1
1
vote
1 answer
What option argument can I give to `cpulimit -l` when I want a process to have unlimit cpu usage?
In cpulimit
-l, --limit=N
percentage of CPU allowed from 1 up. Usually 1 - 100, but can be
higher on multi-core CPUs. (mandatory)
What option argument can I give to -l when I want a process to have no limit on cpu usage?
Is it…
Tim
- 98,580
- 191
- 570
- 977
1
vote
2 answers
Prevent a process from using too much CPU even if available
I would like to avoid a process using too much CPU. In fact, I want to prevent my CPU from heating up since I have some really long CPU demanding tasks (video converting) to run from a Raspberry Pi with Debian on it: temperature rises over 80 °C.
I…
Johannes Lemonde
- 145
- 2
- 7
0
votes
1 answer
Limit CPU usage of background process if system is busy
At the moment I do the following: When I see that the system load of my Ubuntu server is high, I get the PIDs of specific currently running background processes and start cpulimit with the PID. When the system load gets lower, I kill cpulimit, so…
Jomo
- 1
0
votes
0 answers
Limit the total CPU usage for the entire system?
I'm running a Chrome instance on a NAT VPS. Being a NAT VPS it has some restrictions such not not allowing a 15min average load greater than 1. However, just starting and going to a few webpages causes the load to increase > 2 killing the…
DentFuse
- 35
- 5
0
votes
1 answer
clamscan and cpulimit together runs multiple clamscan processes in ubuntu 18 and 20
I have installed clamav and cpulimit. I want to clamscan all directories in /home which are not owned by root 1 by 1 with a cpu limit of 70%.
I use the below command to do that in centos and almalinux:
find /home/ -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d !…
jay
- 21
- 2