redhat man page for acct

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);

DESCRIPTION
       When  called  with  the name of an existing file as argument, accounting is turned on, 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.

       EACCES The argument 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.

       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 no permission to enable process accounting.

       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  (but not POSIX).  SVr4 documents an EBUSY error condition, but no EISDIR or ENOSYS. Also AIX and HPUX document EBUSY (attempt is made
       to enable accounting when it is already enabled), as does Solaris (attempt is made to enable accounting using the same file  that  is  cur-
       rently being used).

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

Linux 2.1.126							    1998-11-04								   ACCT(2)