NAME
acct —
enable or disable process
accounting
SYNOPSIS
#include
<unistd.h>
int
acct(const
char *file);
DESCRIPTION
The
acct()
call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records. If
file is NULL, accounting is
disabled. If file is an existing, NUL-terminated
pathname, record collection is enabled and for every process initiated which
terminates under normal conditions an accounting record is appended to
file. Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots
or other fatal system problems. Records for processes which never terminate
cannot be produced by acct().
acct() is only available on kernels compiled with
the ACCOUNTING option.
For more information on the record structure used by
acct(), see
/usr/include/sys/acct.h and
acct(5).
This call is permitted only to the superuser.
NOTES
Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when space once again becomes available.
RETURN VALUES
On success, zero is returned. Otherwise, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
acct() will fail if one of the following
is true:
- [
EPERM] - The caller is not the superuser.
- [
ENOTDIR] - A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
- [
ENAMETOOLONG] - A component of a pathname exceeded
{NAME_MAX}characters, or an entire path name exceeded{PATH_MAX}characters. - [
ENOENT] - The named file does not exist.
- [
EACCES] - Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, or the path name is not a regular file.
- [
ELOOP] - Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
- [
EROFS] - The named file resides on a read-only file system.
- [
EFAULT] - file points outside the process's allocated address space.
- [
EIO] - An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
An acct() function call appeared in
Version 7 AT&T UNIX.