acct(2) [netbsd man page]
ACCT(2) BSD System Calls Manual ACCT(2) NAME
acct -- enable or disable process accounting LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc) SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h> int acct(const char *file); DESCRIPTION
The acct() call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records. If file is NULL, accounting is disabled. If file is an existing, NUL-terminated, pathname, 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 problems. 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. For this purpose, acct() creates a kernel thread called ``acctwatch''. RETURN VALUES
On success, zero is returned. Otherwise, -1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error. ERRORS
acct() will fail if one of the following is true: [EACCES] Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, or the path name is not a regular file. [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. [ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. [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. [ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory. [EPERM] The caller is not the super-user. [EROFS] The named file resides on a read-only file system. Also, acct() fails if failed to create kernel thread described above. See fork(2) for errno value. SEE ALSO
fork(2), acct(5), sa(8) HISTORY
An acct() function call appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. BSD
June 4, 1993 BSD
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ACCT(2) BSD System Calls Manual ACCT(2) NAME
acct -- enable or disable process accounting LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc) SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h> int acct(const char *file); DESCRIPTION
The acct() system call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records. If the argument file is a null pointer, accounting is disabled. If file is an existing pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for every process initiated which termi- nates under normal conditions an accounting record is appended to file. Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots or other fatal system problems. Records for processes which never terminate cannot be produced by acct(). For more information on the record structure used by acct(), see <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. The values controlling this behaviour can be modified using the following sysctl(8) variables: kern.acct_chkfreq Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk space should be checked. kern.acct_resume The percentage of free disk space above which process accounting will resume. kern.acct_suspend The percentage of free disk space below which process accounting will suspend. RETURN VALUES
On error -1 is returned. The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. ERRORS
The acct() system call 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 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] The file argument 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), accton(8), sa(8) HISTORY
The acct() function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. BSD
April 17, 2004 BSD