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);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       acct(): _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION
       The acct() system call enables or disables process accounting.  If called with the name of
       an existing file as its argument, accounting is turned on, and records for each  terminat‐
       ing  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, or search permission  is  denied
              for  one  of  the directories in the path prefix of filename (see also path_resolu‐
              tion(7)), or 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.

       ENFILE The system limit on the total number of open files has been reached.

       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  controlling this feature is CON‐
              FIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT.

       ENOTDIR
              A component used as a directory in filename is not in fact a directory.

       EPERM  The calling process has insufficient privilege to enable  process  accounting.   On
              Linux the CAP_SYS_PACCT capability is required.

       EROFS  filename refers to a file on a read-only filesystem.

       EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of memory.

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4, 4.3BSD (but not POSIX).

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

       The structure of the records written to the accounting file is described in acct(5).

SEE ALSO
       acct(5)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project.  A  description  of  the
       project,  information  about  reporting  bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be
       found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux                                       2008-06-16                                    ACCT(2)