xref: /dragonfly/lib/libc/sys/acct.2 (revision 0fe46dc6)
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28.\"     @(#)acct.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
29.\" $FreeBSD: src/lib/libc/sys/acct.2,v 1.6.2.5 2004/04/17 10:04:10 brueffer Exp $
30.\" $DragonFly: src/lib/libc/sys/acct.2,v 1.4 2006/05/26 19:39:37 swildner Exp $
31.\"
32.Dd April 17, 2004
33.Dt ACCT 2
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm acct
37.Nd enable or disable process accounting
38.Sh LIBRARY
39.Lb libc
40.Sh SYNOPSIS
41.In unistd.h
42.Ft int
43.Fn acct "const char *file"
44.Sh DESCRIPTION
45The
46.Fn acct
47call enables or disables the collection of system accounting
48records.
49If the argument
50.Fa file
51is a nil pointer, accounting is disabled.
52If
53.Fa file
54is an
55.Em existing
56pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for
57every process initiated which terminates under normal
58conditions an accounting record is appended to
59.Fa file .
60Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots
61or other fatal system problems.
62Records for processes which never terminate can not be
63produced by
64.Fn acct .
65.Pp
66For more information on the record structure used by
67.Fn acct ,
68see
69.In sys/acct.h
70and
71.Xr acct 5 .
72.Pp
73This call is permitted only to the super-user.
74.Sh NOTES
75Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the
76accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when
77space once again becomes available.
78The values controlling this behaviour can be modified using the following
79.Xr sysctl 8
80variables:
81.Bl -tag -width ".Va kern.acct_chkfreq"
82.It Va kern.acct_chkfreq
83Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk
84space should be checked.
85.It Va kern.acct_resume
86The percentage of free disk space above which process
87accounting will resume.
88.It Va kern.acct_suspend
89The percentage of free disk space below which process
90accounting will suspend.
91.El
92.Sh RETURN VALUES
93On error -1 is returned.
94The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user.
95.Sh ERRORS
96.Fn Acct
97will fail if one of the following is true:
98.Bl -tag -width Er
99.It Bq Er EPERM
100The caller is not the super-user.
101.It Bq Er ENOTDIR
102A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
103.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
104A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
105or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
106.It Bq Er ENOENT
107The named file does not exist.
108.It Bq Er EACCES
109Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix,
110or the path name is not a regular file.
111.It Bq Er ELOOP
112Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
113.It Bq Er EROFS
114The named file resides on a read-only file system.
115.It Bq Er EFAULT
116.Fa File
117points outside the process's allocated address space.
118.It Bq Er EIO
119An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
120.El
121.Sh SEE ALSO
122.Xr acct 5 ,
123.Xr accton 8 ,
124.Xr sa 8
125.Sh HISTORY
126An
127.Fn acct
128function call appeared in
129.At v7 .
130