ACCT

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 1998-11-04
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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

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.
ENOMEM: Out of memory.
EPERM: The calling process has no permission to enable process accounting.
ENOENT: The specified filename does not exist.
EACCES: The argument filename is not a regular file.
EIO: Error writing to the file filename.
EUSERS: There are no more free file structures or we run out of memory.

CONFORMING TO

SVr4 (but not POSIX). SVr4 documents EACCES, EBUSY, EFAULT, ELOOP, ENAMETOOLONG, ENOTDIR, ENOENT, EPERM and EROFS error conditions, but no ENOSYS.

NOTES

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

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