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 the
argument file is a nil 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
/usr/include/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.
RETURN VALUES
The acct() function returns the
value 0 if successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned and
the global variable errno is set to indicate the
error. 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
{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.