acct(FP)                       6 January 1993                       acct(FP)


 Name

    acct - format of per-process accounting file

 Description

    Files produced as a result of calling acct(S) have records in the form
    defined by <sys/acct.h>.

    In acflag, the AFORK flag is turned on by each fork(S) and turned off by
    an exec(S.)  The accomm member is inherited from the parent process and
    is reset by any call to exec(S).  Each time the system charges the pro-
    cess with a clock tick, it also adds the current process size to the
    acmem member, computed as follows:

       (data size) + (text size) / (number of in-core processes using text)

    The value of acmem/acstime can be viewed as an approximation to the
    mean process size, as modified by text-sharing.

 Notes

    The acmem value for a short-lived command gives little information about
    the actual size of the command, because acmem may be incremented while a
    different command (for example, the shell) is being executed by the pro-
    cess.

 See also

    acctcom(ADM), acct(S)

 Standards conformance

    acct is conformant with:
    AT&T SVID Issue 2;
    and X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 3, 1989.