acct (2)

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(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man2/acct.2freebsd".)

NAME

acct - enable or disable process accounting

LIBRARY

Lb libc

SYNOPSIS

In unistd.h Ft int Fn acct const char *file

DESCRIPTION

The Fn acct system call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records. If the argument Fa file is a null pointer, accounting is disabled. If Fa 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 Fa file . Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots or other fatal system problems. Records for processes which never terminate cannot be produced by Fn acct .

For more information on the record structure used by Fn acct , see In 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 Fn acct system call will fail if one of the following is true:

Bq Er EPERM

The caller is not the super-user.

Bq Er ENOTDIR

A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG

A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.

Bq Er ENOENT

The named file does not exist.

Bq Er EACCES

Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, or the path name is not a regular file.

Bq Er ELOOP

Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

Bq Er EROFS

The named file resides on a read-only file system.

Bq Er EFAULT

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

Bq Er EIO

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

SEE ALSO

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

HISTORY

The Fn acct function appeared in AT&T System v7 .