ACCT(2)                                             Linux Programmer's Manual                                            ACCT(2)



NAME
       acct - switch process accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       int acct(const char *filename);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       acct(): _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION
       The  acct() system call enables or disables process accounting.  If called with the name of an existing file as its argu-
       ment, accounting is turned on, and records for each terminating process are appended to filename as  it  terminates.   An
       argument of NULL causes accounting to be turned off.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EACCES Write  permission  is  denied for the specified file, or search permission is denied for one of the directories in
              the path prefix of filename (see also path_resolution(7)), or filename is not a regular file.

       EFAULT filename points outside your accessible address space.

       EIO    Error writing to the file filename.

       EISDIR filename is a directory.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving filename.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              filename was too long.

       ENFILE The system limit on the total number of open files has been reached.

       ENOENT The specified filename does not exist.

       ENOMEM Out of memory.

       ENOSYS BSD process accounting has not been enabled when the operating system kernel was compiled.  The kernel  configura-
              tion parameter controlling this feature is CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT.

       ENOTDIR
              A component used as a directory in filename is not in fact a directory.

       EPERM  The  calling process has insufficient privilege to enable process accounting.  On Linux the CAP_SYS_PACCT capabil-
              ity is required.

       EROFS  filename refers to a file on a read-only file system.

       EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of memory.

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4, 4.3BSD (but not POSIX).

NOTES
       No accounting is produced for programs running when a system crash occurs.  In particular, nonterminating  processes  are
       never accounted for.

       The structure of the records written to the accounting file is described in acct(5).

SEE ALSO
       acct(5)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 3.25 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about
       reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux                                                      2008-06-16                                                    ACCT(2)