ACCT

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 2004-06-23
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NAME

acct - switch process accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h>

int acct(const char *filename);

DESCRIPTION

When called with the name of an existing file as argument, accounting is turned on, 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(2)), 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 (but not POSIX). SVr4 documents an EBUSY error condition, but no EISDIR or ENOSYS. Also AIX and HPUX document EBUSY (attempt is made to enable accounting when it is already enabled), as does Solaris (attempt is made to enable accounting using the same file that is currently being used).

NOTES

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