ACCT(2)

NAME

     acct -- enable or disable process accounting

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <unistd.h>

     int
     acct(const char *file);

DESCRIPTION

     The acct() system 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 col-
     lection 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().

     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 exer-
     cised only by the super-user.

ERRORS

     The acct() system call 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 translat-
			ing the pathname.

     [EROFS]		The named file resides on a read-only file system.

     [EFAULT]		The file argument points outside the process's allo-
			cated 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

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