NAME

       acct - switch process accounting on or off

LIBRARY

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <unistd.h>

       int acct(const char *_Nullable path);

   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 pathname of an
       existing file as its argument, accounting is turned on, and records  for  each  terminating  process  are
       appended to the file 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 path (see also path_resolution(7)), or path  is  not  a  regular
              file.

       EFAULT path points outside your accessible address space.

       EIO    Error writing to the file path.

       EISDIR path is a directory.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving path.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              path was too long.

       ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been reached.

       ENOENT The specified path 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 path 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  path 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)

Linux man-pages 6.15                               2025-05-17                                            acct(2)