Man Linux: Main Page and Category List

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 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,  or  search
              permission  is  denied  for  one  of the directories in the path
              prefix of filename (see also path_resolution(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 CONFIG_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 file system.

       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 3.24 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of  the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.