NAME
acct
—
enable or disable process
accounting
LIBRARY
library “libc”
SYNOPSIS
#include
<unistd.h>
int
acct
(const
char *file);
DESCRIPTION
Theacct
()
call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records. If the
argument file is a null pointer, accounting is disabled.
If file is an
existing
pathname (null-terminated), 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 can not be produced by acct
().
For more information on the record structure used by
acct
(), see
<sys/acct.h>
and
acct(5).
This call is permitted only to the super-user.
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. The values controlling this behaviour can be modified using the following sysctl(8) variables:
- kern.acct_chkfreq
- Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk space should be checked.
- kern.acct_resume
- The percentage of free disk space above which process accounting will resume.
- kern.acct_suspend
- The percentage of free disk space below which process accounting will suspend.
RETURN VALUES
On error -1 is returned. The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user.
ERRORS
Acct
() will fail if one of the following
is true:
- [
EPERM
] - The caller is not the super-user.
- [
ENOTDIR
] - A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
- [
ENAMETOOLONG
] - A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 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.