How to start a realtime process?

Question

I looking for a way to start a real-time process or set a running process as a real-time process.

Answer 1

To start/set a process as real-time, you should use chrt

Usage to start a new process:

chrt priority command [arguments]

Usage to set a running process:

chrt -r -p priority pid

Example:

sudo chrt -r 70 <your command>

or

<your command> & sudo chrt -r 70 $!

Answer 2

Of course, one can do this programmatically just by calling the relevant system calls. There are various commands that wrap these so that one can do also this at the level of shell programming.

• On HP-UX, the command wrapper for this is rtprio.
• On FreeBSD, the command wrapper for this is rtprio with a nod in the manual to the HP-UX tool.
• On Illumos, and on Solaris and Ultrix before it, the command wrapper is priocntl.
• It is priocntl on Schillix, too.
• In the util-linux toolset for Linux-based operating systems, the command wrapper is chrt.
• In the BusyBox toolset, the command wrapper is chrt with different options available than for the util-linux tool.
• In the ToyBox toolset, the command wrapper is chrt with a third set of different options.