renice command not helping
 

I am running RHEL 5.5. I have a 3rd party app that runs a process, only when initiated by a user, called xreport. My issue is that when any user runs this, it consumes all the cpu resources. I tried running renice on the PID after a user launched it and it didn't help. I can't do anything with the xreport itself as it's a 3rd party binary.

Anybody have another suggestion as to how to stop this from consuming so much cpu?

Is it actually preventing other things from running after you have reniced it? Using all the available CPU time is not a crime.

cpulimit can limit the cpu usage
 

You can use a command called cpulimit

Maybe its not on your machine but if you are using debian or ubuntu then its just an apt-get install cpulimit

Take a look at this article

--
Peter Nilsson
http://www.pvnilsson.com

sorry i didn't saw that you where using RHEL ;-)

if you are using RHEL the you have to find a rpm version of cpulimit or install it with yum, maybe there is one with RHEL allready otherwise you can use a fedora version or a rpm from centos.

--
Peter Nilsson
http://www.pvnilsson.com

cpulimit worked...just ran it against the PID and I was good...Thanks all!!!