ACCT(2) — HP-UX

NAME

acct − enable or disable process accounting

SYNOPSIS

int acct (path)
char ∗path;

DESCRIPTION

Acct is used to enable or disable the system’s process accounting routine. If the routine is enabled, an accounting record will be written on an accounting file for each process that terminates. Termination can be caused by one of two things: an exit call or a signal; see exit(2) and signal(2). The effective user ID of the calling process must be super-user to use this call.

Path points to a path name naming the accounting file. The accounting file format is given in acct(4).

The accounting routine is enabled if path is non-zero and no errors occur during the system call. It is disabled if path is zero and no errors occur during the system call.

The system shuts off accounting when the file size exceeds a system dependent limit.

RETURN VALUE

Upon successful completion, a value of 0 is returned. Otherwise, a value of −1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

Acct will fail if one or more of the following are true:

[EPERM] The effective user ID of the calling process is not super-user.

[EBUSY] An attempt is being made to enable accounting when it is already enabled.

[ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

[ENOENT] One or more components of the accounting file path name do not exist.

[EACCES] The file named by path is not an ordinary file.

[EROFS] The named file resides on a read-only file system.

[EFAULT] Path points to an illegal address. The reliable detection of this error will be implementation dependent.

[ETXTBSY] Path points to a text file which is currently open.

[ENAMETOOLONG] The accounting file path name exceeds MAXPATHLEN characters.

HARDWARE DEPENDENCIES

Series 200, 300, 500
The system’s process accounting routine will ignore any locks placed on the process accounting file.

If the size of the process accounting file reaches 5000 blocks, records for processes terminating after that point will be silently lost. However, in that case the turnacct command would still sense that process accounting is still enabled. This loss of records can be prevented by the use of ckpacct (see acctsh(1M)).

Series 200, 300, 800
When the amount of free space on the file system containing the accounting file falls below a configurable threshold, the system prints a message on the console and disables process accounting. Another message is printed and the process accounting is re-enabled when the space reaches a second configurable threshold.

Series 500
Any child process created by vfork(2) that does not call exec(2) before terminating will not generate a process accounting record.

Integral PC
Process accounting is not supported.

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