acct(2)acct(2)NAMEacct - Enables and disables process accounting
SYNOPSIS
int acct(
char *path );
PARAMETERS
Specifies a pointer to the pathname of the file, or specifies a null
pointer.
DESCRIPTION
The acct() function enables and disables UNIX process accounting. When
enabled, process accounting produces an accounting record on behalf of
each terminating process. The path parameter specifies the pathname of
the file to which an accounting record is written. When the path param‐
eter is 0 (zero) or a null value, the acct() function disables the
accounting routine. If the path parameter refers to a symbolic link,
the acct() function writes records to the file pointed to by the sym‐
bolic link. If Network File System is installed on your system, the
accounting file can reside on another node. To ensure accurate account‐
ing, each node must have its own accounting file, which can be located
on any node in the network. The calling process must have superuser
privilege to enable or disable process accounting.
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the acct() function returns a value of 0
(zero). Otherwise, a value of -1 is returned and errno is set to indi‐
cate the error.
ERRORS
If the acct() function fails, errno may be set to one of the following
values: The calling process does not have appropriate system privilege.
The file named by the path parameter does not exist. The file named by
the path parameter is not an ordinary file. Write permission is denied
for the named accounting file. The named file resides on a read-only
file system.
SEE ALSO
Functions: exit(2), sigaction(2), sigvec(2), expacct(3), raise(3)acct(2)
