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 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.

STANDARDS

       None.

HISTORY

       SVr4, 4.3BSD.

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)