acct(2)                                                 System Calls Manual                                                 acct(2)

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
       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)

Linux man-pages 6.03                                         2022-12-03                                                     acct(2)