Temporarily disable system-wide NUMA balancing for the duration of execution of a command

disable-numa-balancing.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

NUMA_KEY="kernel.numa_balancing"

if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 <command> [args...]" >&2
    exit 1
fi

# Read current value (read is unprivileged)
ORIG_NUMA=$(sysctl -n "$NUMA_KEY")

cleanup() {
    sudo sysctl -w "$NUMA_KEY=$ORIG_NUMA" >/dev/null
}
trap cleanup EXIT INT TERM

# Disable NUMA balancing
sudo sysctl -w "$NUMA_KEY=0" >/dev/null

echo "NUMA balancing disabled (was $ORIG_NUMA)"

# Run with all args
"$@"