Looks like a bug to me due to wrong assumptions about 'nice' arguments, but could be because a "non-standard" 'nice' is used. If we do:
> trace(system, tracer = quote(print(command))) Tracing function "system" in package "base" we see that the system call used is: > cl <- parallel::makePSOCKcluster(2L, renice = 19) Tracing system(cmd, wait = FALSE) on entry [1] "nice +19 '/usr/lib/R/bin/Rscript' --default-packages=datasets,utils,grDevices,graphics,stats,methods -e 'parallel:::.slaveRSOCK()' MASTER=localhost PORT=11146 OUT=/dev/null TIMEOUT=2592000 XDR=TRUE" nice: ‘+19’: No such file or directory ^C The code that prepends that 'nice +19' is in parallel:::newPSOCKnode: if (!is.na(renice) && renice) cmd <- sprintf("nice +%d %s", as.integer(renice), cmd) I don't know where that originates from and on what platform it was tests/validated. On Ubuntu 16.04, CentOS 6.6, and CentOS 7.4, I have 'nice' from "GNU coreutils" and they all complain about using '+', e.g. $ nice +19 date nice: +19: No such file or directory but '-' works: $ nice -19 date Sun Dec 3 20:01:31 PST 2017 Neither 'nice --help' nor 'man help' mention the use of a +n option. WORKAROUND: As a workaround, you can use: cl <- future::makeClusterPSOCK(2L, rscript = c("nice", "--adjustment=10", file.path(R.home("bin"), "Rscript"))) which is backward compatible with parallel::makePSOCKcluster() but provides you with more detailed control. Try adding verbose = TRUE to see what the exact call looks like. /Henrik On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 7:35 PM, Andreas Leha <andreas.l...@med.uni-goettingen.de> wrote: > Hi all, > > Is it possible to use the 'renice' option together with parallel > clusters of type 'PSOCK'? The help page for parallel::makeCluster is > not specific about which options are supported on which types and I am > getting the following message when passing renice = 19 : > >> cl <- parallel::makeCluster(2, renice = 19) > nice: ‘+19’: No such file or directory > > Kind regards, > Andreas > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.