Have you tried to find out why nice(-1) doesn't work? Here is an nice observation, maybe we just screwd something up and use 0 - 39 as our range instead of the normal one, -20 - 19. Will look at it when I get some spare time.
/home/ams $ nice -n -2 nice /bin/nice: cannot set priority: Permission denied /home/ams $ nice -n -1 nice 0 /home/ams $ nice -n 38 nice 38 /home/ams $ nice -n 39 nice 38 /home/ams $ nice -n 40 nice /bin/nice: cannot set priority: No such process /home/ams $
