A guide to limiting CPUs to Linux processes on Debian / Ubuntu with CPUTool

Currently, this program is only available on Debian / Ubuntu you can install using the following command:

sudo apt install cputool

Limit process with CPULimit

Let us first learn about how cpulimit works, let's first try running a command dd Hard Drive .

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null &

You can track your progress in action with the command: top

Here I see that this process always runs with 100% cpu (1 core), now I try limited to CPUtool.

You use the -cpu-limit or -c options to limit the process's cpu usage, -p to specify which processes need to be restricted.

For example, I limit the above process to a PID of 8275 with 50% (1 core).

cputool --cpu-limit 50 -p 8275

After running, you can check the active progress with the command top

Suppose I want to reset 20%:

 cputool --cpu-limit 20 -p 8275

Note: When running this program, after entering the command you do not operate on the keyboard to keep the program running, to exit you can press ctrl + X.

You can also find and group programs by specifying a unique PID. For example, if you want to find processes running by apache you can use:

pidof apache2

Result.

# pidof apache2
9592 3643 3642 3641 3640 3638 3637 1780

You can use the following command to limit all apache processes

cputool --cpu-limit 20 -P 1780

You note, you use the -P option (capital letter P), unlike the first example, which is lowercase p.

You can see more information with:

man cputool

Good luck.