acct

acct(2) System Calls Manual acct(2)

NAME

   acct - switch process accounting on or off

LIBRARY

   Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

   #include <unistd.h>

   int acct(const char *_Nullable filename);

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

   acct():
       Since glibc 2.21:
           _DEFAULT_SOURCE
       In glibc 2.19 and 2.20:
           _DEFAULT_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
       Up to and including glibc 2.19:
           _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 argument, 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 to indicate the error.

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-wide limit on the total number of open files has been reached.

   ENOENT The specified file does not exist.

   ENOMEM Out of memory.

   ENOSYS BSD  process  accounting  has  not  been  enabled  when  the  operating  system  kernel  was  compiled.   The  kernel  configuration  parameter controlling this feature is CON‐
          FIG_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 capability is required.

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

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

STANDARDS

   None.

HISTORY

   SVr4, 4.3BSD.

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).