1.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 11.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 12.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 13.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 14.\" without specific prior written permission. 15.\" 16.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 17.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 18.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 19.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 20.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 21.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 22.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 23.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 24.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 25.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 26.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 27.\" 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.\" 31.Dd April 17, 2004 32.Dt ACCT 2 33.Os 34.Sh NAME 35.Nm acct 36.Nd enable or disable process accounting 37.Sh LIBRARY 38.Lb libc 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 47records. 48If the argument 49.Fa file 50is a null pointer, accounting is disabled. 51If 52.Fa file 53is an 54.Em existing 55pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for 56every process initiated which terminates under normal 57conditions an accounting record is appended to 58.Fa file . 59Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots 60or other fatal system problems. 61Records for processes which never terminate can not be 62produced by 63.Fn acct . 64.Pp 65For more information on the record structure used by 66.Fn acct , 67see 68.In sys/acct.h 69and 70.Xr acct 5 . 71.Pp 72This call is permitted only to the super-user. 73.Sh NOTES 74Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the 75accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when 76space once again becomes available. 77The values controlling this behaviour can be modified using the following 78.Xr sysctl 8 79variables: 80.Bl -tag -width ".Va kern.acct_chkfreq" 81.It Va kern.acct_chkfreq 82Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk 83space should be checked. 84.It Va kern.acct_resume 85The percentage of free disk space above which process 86accounting will resume. 87.It Va kern.acct_suspend 88The percentage of free disk space below which process 89accounting will suspend. 90.El 91.Sh RETURN VALUES 92On error -1 is returned. 93The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. 94.Sh ERRORS 95.Fn Acct 96will fail if one of the following is true: 97.Bl -tag -width Er 98.It Bq Er EPERM 99The caller is not the super-user. 100.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 101A component of the path prefix is not a directory. 102.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG 103A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, 104or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters. 105.It Bq Er ENOENT 106The named file does not exist. 107.It Bq Er EACCES 108Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, 109or the path name is not a regular file. 110.It Bq Er ELOOP 111Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 112.It Bq Er EROFS 113The named file resides on a read-only file system. 114.It Bq Er EFAULT 115.Fa File 116points outside the process's allocated address space. 117.It Bq Er EIO 118An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. 119.El 120.Sh SEE ALSO 121.Xr acct 5 , 122.Xr accton 8 , 123.Xr sa 8 124.Sh HISTORY 125An 126.Fn acct 127function call appeared in 128.At v7 . 129