ACCT(2) BSD Programmer's Manual ACCT(2)NAMEacct - 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 file is NULL, accounting is disabled. If file is an existing,
NUL-terminated pathname, record collection is enabled and for every pro-
cess initiated which terminates under normal conditions an accounting
record is appended to file. Abnormal conditions of termination are re-
boots or other fatal system problems. Records for processes which never
terminate cannot be produced by acct(). acct() is only available on ker-
nels compiled with the ACCOUNTING option.
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 superuser.
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
On success, zero is returned. Otherwise, -1 is returned and errno is set
to indicate the error.
ERRORSacct() will fail if one of the following is true:
[EPERM] The caller is not the superuser.
[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 ALSOacct(5), accton(8), sa(8)HISTORY
An acct() function call appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
MirOS BSD #10-current June 4, 1993 1
