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) 						      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