You want to know what nice value your current shell is running with, without changing it. Which command prints it?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 103. GNU and Unix commands easy
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct nice
Correct. With no command to run, nice prints the current niceness, which the shell inherited and passes to its children.
Not correct nice -n 0
Wrong. Once an adjustment is given, a command is expected too; GNU nice reports that a command must be given with an adjustment.
Not correct renice 0
Wrong. renice needs a target as well as a value; with none it prints a usage error, and it would set rather than report.
Not correct top -n 0
Wrong. In top, -n is the number of display iterations before exit, nothing to do with nice values.
Why
nice run without a command prints the caller's niceness, which is normally 0 for an ordinary login shell. Given a command it runs that command with the niceness incremented by the -n adjustment. The distinction matters on the exam because renice looks similar but always operates on processes that already exist and always sets an absolute value.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page nice(1)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 103 and space the ones you get wrong.
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