Linux and UNIX Man Pages

Linux & Unix Commands - Search Man Pages

acct(2) [linux man page]

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 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 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 configuration parameter con- trolling 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 capability 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 3.27 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)

Check Out this Related Man Page

ACCT(2) 						      BSD System Calls Manual							   ACCT(2)

NAME
acct -- enable or disable process accounting SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h> int acct(const char *file); DESCRIPTION
The acct() call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records. If the argument file is a nil pointer, accounting is dis- abled. If file is an existing pathname (null-terminated), record collection 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 prob- lems. Records for processes which never terminate can not be produced by acct(). For more information on the record structure used by acct(), see /usr/include/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. RETURN VALUES
The acct() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error. The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. 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. [ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} 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) HISTORY
An acct() function call appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. 4th Berkeley Distribution June 4, 1993 4th Berkeley Distribution
Man Page