mac_priority(4)

mac_priority4

Policy for scheduling privileges of non-root users

Usage

To compile the mac_priority policy into your kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

options MAC options MAC_PRIORITY

Alternately, to load the mac_priority policy module at boot time, place the following line in your kernel configuration file:

options MAC

and in loader.conf(5):

mac_priority_load="YES"

Overview

The mac_priority policy grants scheduling privileges based on group(5) membership. Users or processes in the group ‘realtime’ (gid 47) are allowed to run threads and processes with realtime scheduling priority. Users or processes in the group ‘idletime’ (gid 48) are allowed to run threads and processes with idle scheduling priority.

With the mac_priority realtime policy active, privileged users may use the rtprio(1) utility to start processes with realtime priority. Privileged applications can promote threads and processes to realtime priority through the rtprio(2) system calls.

When the idletime policy is active, privileged users may use the idprio(1) utility to start processes with idle priority. Privileged applications can demote threads and processes to idle priority through the rtprio(2) system calls.

Privileges Granted

The realtime policy grants the following kernel privileges to any process running with the realtime group id:

PRIV_SCHED_RTPRIO
PRIV_SCHED_SETPOLICY

The kernel privilege granted by the idletime policy is:

PRIV_SCHED_IDPRIO

Runtime Configuration

The following sysctl(8) MIBs are available for fine-tuning this MAC policy. All sysctl(8) variables can also be set as loader(8) tunables in loader.conf(5).

security.mac.priority.realtime

Enable the realtime policy. (Default: 1).

security.mac.priority.realtime_gid

The numeric gid of the realtime group. (Default: 47).

security.mac.priority.idletime

Enable the idletime policy. (Default: 1).

security.mac.priority.idletime_gid

The numeric gid of the idletime group. (Default: 48).

Releases

14 releases since FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE; the text changed 1 time.

  1. 13.1–14.0
  2. 14.1–16.0

History

MAC first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0 and mac_priority first appeared in FreeBSD 13.1.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.