bsd man page for acct

ACCT(2) 							System Calls Manual							   ACCT(2)

NAME
       acct - turn accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS
       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 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 VALUE
       On error -1 is returned.  The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user.  It is erroneous  to  try  to  turn	on
       accounting when it is already on.

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.

       [EINVAL]       The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set.

       [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 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
       acct(5), sa(8)

BUGS
       No accounting is produced for programs running when a crash occurs.  In particular non-terminating programs are never accounted for.

4th Berkeley Distribution					   May 22, 1986 							   ACCT(2)