NAME

acct − turn accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS

acct(file)
char ∗file;

DESCRIPTION

The system is prepared to write a record in an accounting file for each process as it terminates.  This call, with a null-terminated string naming an existing file as argument, turns on accounting; records for each terminating process are appended to file. An argument of 0 causes accounting to be turned off.

The accounting file format is given in 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 VALUE

On error −1 is returned.  The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user.  It is erroneous to try to turn on accounting when it is already on. 

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. 

[EINVAL] The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set. 

[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] 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)

BUGS

No accounting is produced for programs running when a crash occurs.  In particular non-terminating programs are never accounted for. 

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  May 22, 1986