acct(2) System Calls Manual acct(2)
NAME
acct - switch process accounting on or off
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int acct(const char *_Nullable filename);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
acct():
Since glibc 2.21:
_DEFAULT_SOURCE
In glibc 2.19 and 2.20:
_DEFAULT_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
Up to and including glibc 2.19:
_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 to indicate the error.
ERRORS
EACCES Write permission is denied for the specified file, or search per-
mission 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-wide limit on the total number of open files has been
reached.
ENOENT The specified file 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 di-
rectory.
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 filesystem.
EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of memory.
STANDARDS
None.
HISTORY
SVr4, 4.3BSD.
NOTES
No accounting is produced for programs running when a system crash oc-
curs. 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)
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 acct(2)
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