Take the 2-minute tour ×  I run a convert *.tif bla.pdf command
sometimes with say 60 images. Now this renders my computer
unusable until it finishes.  I tried using nice and ionice but
it did not help much.  Is there a way to limit resources (disk
read/writes and maybe cpu) to the convert command?
share|improve this question ionice -c 3 (idle priority class)
should have no impact on regular system activity. If you say it
still renders your computer unusable, I'd suspect something is
wrong (e.g. had disk problems, etc.) You need to trace and fix
that problem first. Check your logs (especially the kernel log)
for unusual errors, etc. –  haimg Nov 26 '12 at 15:57 Maybe it
is because it uses a lot of CPU as well. I actually tried to
"chain" ionice and nice ionice -c 3 nice -n 20 convert. Is it a
bad idea? –  To Do Nov 26 '12 at 16:05 It's not a bad idea per
se (nice and ionice are orthogonal), but I'd rather find out
what's wrong before trying random tricks. Your computer should
not behave like this in any case