acct(2) BSD System Calls Manual acct(2)
NAME
acct -- enable or disable process accounting
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>
int
acct(const char *file);
DESCRIPTION
The acct() call enables or disables the collection of system accounting
records. If the argument file is a nil pointer, accounting is disabled.
If file is an existing pathname (null-terminated), record collection is
enabled and for every process initiated which terminates under normal
conditions an accounting record is appended to file. Abnormal conditions
of termination are reboots or other fatal system problems. Records for
processes which never terminate can not be produced by acct().
For more information on the record structure used by acct(), see
/usr/include/sys/acct.h and acct(5).
This call is permitted only to the super-user.
NOTES
Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the accounting
file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when space once again
becomes available.
RETURN VALUES
The acct() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise the
value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the
error. The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the
super-user.
ERRORS
acct() will fail if one of the following is true:
[EPERM] The caller is not the super-user.
[ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
[ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} charac-
ters, or an entire path name exceeded {PATH_MAX} char-
acters.
[ENOENT] The named file does not exist.
[EACCES] Search permission is denied for a component of the
path prefix, or the path name is not a regular file.
[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translat-
ing the pathname.
[EROFS] The named file resides on a read-only file system.
[EFAULT] File points outside the process's allocated address
space.
[EIO] An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to
the file system.
SEE ALSO
acct(5), sa(8)
HISTORY
An acct() function call appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
4th Berkeley Distribution June 4, 1993 4th Berkeley Distribution
Mac OS X 10.9.1 - Generated Sun Jan 5 15:57:26 CST 2014