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

Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable 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 pathname (including the terminating NUL) exceeded PATH_MAX bytes.

[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

acct(5), accton(8), sa(8)

HISTORY

An acct() function call appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.