xref: /openbsd/lib/libc/sys/acct.2 (revision fc61954a)
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31.\"     @(#)acct.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
32.\"
33.Dd $Mdocdate: September 10 2015 $
34.Dt ACCT 2
35.Os
36.Sh NAME
37.Nm acct
38.Nd enable or disable process accounting
39.Sh SYNOPSIS
40.In unistd.h
41.Ft int
42.Fn acct "const char *file"
43.Sh DESCRIPTION
44The
45.Fn acct
46call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records.
47If
48.Fa file
49is
50.Dv NULL ,
51accounting is disabled.
52If
53.Fa file
54is an existing, NUL-terminated pathname, record collection is enabled
55and for every process initiated which terminates under normal conditions
56an accounting record is appended to
57.Fa file .
58Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots or other
59fatal system problems.
60Records for processes which never terminate cannot be produced by
61.Fn acct .
62.Fn acct
63is only available on kernels compiled with the
64.Cm ACCOUNTING
65option.
66.Pp
67For more information on the record structure used by
68.Fn acct ,
69see
70.Pa /usr/include/sys/acct.h
71and
72.Xr acct 5 .
73.Pp
74This call is permitted only to the superuser.
75.Sh NOTES
76Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the
77accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when
78space once again becomes available.
79.Sh RETURN VALUES
80.Rv -std
81.Sh ERRORS
82.Fn acct
83will fail if one of the following is true:
84.Bl -tag -width Er
85.It Bq Er EPERM
86The caller is not the superuser.
87.It Bq Er ENOTDIR
88A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
89.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
90A component of a pathname exceeded
91.Dv NAME_MAX
92characters, or an entire pathname (including the terminating NUL)
93exceeded
94.Dv PATH_MAX
95bytes.
96.It Bq Er ENOENT
97The named file does not exist.
98.It Bq Er EACCES
99Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix,
100or the path name is not a regular file.
101.It Bq Er ELOOP
102Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
103.It Bq Er EROFS
104The named file resides on a read-only file system.
105.It Bq Er EFAULT
106.Fa file
107points outside the process's allocated address space.
108.It Bq Er EIO
109An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
110.El
111.Sh SEE ALSO
112.Xr acct 5 ,
113.Xr accton 8 ,
114.Xr sa 8
115.Sh HISTORY
116An
117.Fn acct
118function call appeared in
119.At v7 .
120