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ACCT(2)                       Linux Programmer's Manual                       ACCT(2)

NAME         top

       acct - switch process accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <unistd.h>

       int acct(const char *filename);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       acct(): _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set
       appropriately.

ERRORS         top

       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 limit on the total number of open files has been reached.

       ENOENT The specified filename 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 file system.

       EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of memory.

CONFORMING TO         top

       SVr4, 4.3BSD (but not POSIX).

NOTES         top

       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         top

       acct(5)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 3.32 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found
       at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                                 2008-06-16                              ACCT(2)

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