NAME

       acct — enable or disable process accounting

LIBRARY

       Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <unistd.h>

       int
       acct(const char *file);

DESCRIPTION

       The  acct() system call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records.  If the argument
       file is a null pointer, accounting is disabled.  If  file  is  an  existing  pathname  (null-terminated),
       record  collection is enabled and for every process initiated which terminates under normal conditions an
       accounting record is appended to file.  Abnormal conditions of termination are  reboots  or  other  fatal
       system problems.  Records for processes which never terminate cannot be produced by acct().

       For more information on the record structure used by acct(), see <sys/acct.h> and 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.  The values controlling this behaviour  can
       be modified using the following sysctl(8) variables:

       kern.acct_chkfreq  Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk space should be checked.

       kern.acct_resume   The percentage of free disk space above which process accounting will resume.

       kern.acct_suspend  The percentage of free disk space below which process accounting will suspend.

RETURN VALUES

       On error -1 is returned.  The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user.

ERRORS

       The acct() system call 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.

       [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]           The file argument points outside the process's allocated address space.

       [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

       [EINTEGRITY]       Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system.

SEE ALSO

       acct(5), accton(8), sa(8)

HISTORY

       The acct() function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

Debian                                           March 30, 2020                                          ACCT(2)