nproc

Q: What does nproc do?

Print the number of available processing units. nproc prints the number of CPUs available to the current process (respecting CPU affinity and cgroups). Simpler than parsing lscpu. Useful for setting parallel job counts in scripts and Makefiles.

Print the number of available processing units.

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interactive breakdown — edit the command and press Explain

What it does

nproc prints the number of CPUs available to the current process (respecting CPU affinity and cgroups). Simpler than parsing lscpu. Useful for setting parallel job counts in scripts and Makefiles.

Common flags

Flag	Meaning
`--all`	Print total number of processors, not just available

Examples

nprocNumber of CPUs available to current process · explain & risk-check →

nproc --allTotal CPU count on the system · explain & risk-check →

make -j$(nproc)Compile using all available CPUs · explain & risk-check →

xargs -P $(nproc)Parallelize to number of CPUs · explain & risk-check →

Pro tip

Use `$(nproc)` in Dockerfiles for parallel builds: `RUN make -j$(nproc)` — builds in containers respects the container's CPU quota, not the host's full count.

lscpu uptime top

Open the full explainer →More in System & Processes

Reference text is hand-written and may be incomplete — check man nproc for your version. Test destructive commands on a non-production system first.