acct(2) [osf1 man page]

acct(2) 							System Calls Manual							   acct(2)

NAME

       acct - Enables and disables process accounting

SYNOPSIS

       int acct (      char *path );

PARAMETERS

       Specifies a pointer to the pathname of the file, or specifies a null pointer.

DESCRIPTION

       The acct() function enables and disables UNIX process accounting.  When enabled, process accounting produces an accounting record on behalf
       of each terminating process.  The path parameter specifies the pathname of the file to which an accounting record  is  written.	 When  the
       path parameter is 0 (zero) or a null value, the acct() function disables the accounting routine.

       If the path parameter refers to a symbolic link, the acct() function writes records to the file pointed to by the symbolic link.

       If  Network  File  System is installed on your system, the accounting file can reside on another node.  To ensure accurate accounting, each
       node must have its own accounting file, which can be located on any node in the network.

       The calling process must have superuser privilege to enable or disable process accounting.

RETURN VALUES

       Upon successful completion, the acct() function returns a value of 0 (zero).  Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned  and	errno  is  set	to
       indicate the error.

ERRORS

       If  the acct() function fails, errno may be set to one of the following values: The calling process does not have appropriate system privi-
       lege.  The file named by the path parameter does not exist.

       The file named by the path parameter is not an ordinary file.  Write permission is denied for the named accounting file.   The  named  file
       resides on a read-only file system.

RELATED INFORMATION

       Functions: exit(2), sigaction(2), sigvec(2), expacct(3), raise(3) delim off

																	   acct(2)

acct(2) 							System Calls Manual							   acct(2)

Name
       acct - turn accounting on or off

Syntax
       acct(file)
       char *file;

Description
       The system is prepared to write a record in an accounting file for each process as it terminates.  This call, with a null-terminated string
       naming an existing file as argument, turns on accounting; records for each terminating process are appended to  file.   An  argument  of  0
       causes accounting to be turned off.

       The accounting file format is given in

       This  call  is  permitted  only to the superuser.  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
       On error, -1 is returned.  The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the superuser.  It is erroneous  to  try  to  turn	on
       accounting when it is already on.  If successful, 0 is returned.

Diagnostics
       The system call will fail if one of the following is true:

       [EPERM]	      The caller is not the superuser.

       [ENOTDIR]      A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

       [ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire pathname exceeded 1023 characters.

       [ENOENT]       The named file does not exist.

       [EACCES]       The path name is not a regular file.

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

       [EFAULT]       The file points outside the process's allocated address space.

       [ELOOP]	      Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

       [EIO]	      An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

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

See Also
       acct(5), sa(8)

																	   acct(2)