NAME

       acct - switch process accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS

       #include <unistd.h>

       int acct(const char *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 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(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 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 filesystem.

       EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of memory.

CONFORMING TO

       SVr4, 4.3BSD (but not POSIX).

NOTES

       No accounting is produced for programs running when a system crash occurs.  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)

COLOPHON

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