acct(2)
Name
acct − turn accounting on or off
Syntax
acct(file)
char *file;
Description
The system is prepared to write a record in an accounting file for each process as it terminates. This call, with a null-terminated string naming an existing file as argument, turns on accounting; records for each terminating process are appended to file. An argument of 0 causes accounting to be turned off.
The accounting file format is given in acct(.).
This call is permitted only to the superuser. 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.
Return Value
On error, −1 is returned. The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the superuser. It is erroneous to try to turn on accounting when it is already on. If successful, 0 is returned.
Diagnostics
The acct system call will fail if one of the following is true:
[EPERM] The caller is not the superuser.
[ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
[ENAMETOOLONG]
A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an entire pathname exceeded 1023 characters.
[ENOENT] The named file does not exist.
[EACCES] The path name is not a regular file.
[EROFS] The named file resides on a read-only file system.
[EFAULT] The file points outside the process’s allocated address space.
[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
[EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
Restrictions
No accounting is produced for programs running when a crash occurs. In particular, nonterminating programs are never accounted for.