xref: /dragonfly/lib/libc/sys/acct.2 (revision f746689a)
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32.\"     @(#)acct.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
33.\" $FreeBSD: src/lib/libc/sys/acct.2,v 1.6.2.5 2004/04/17 10:04:10 brueffer Exp $
34.\" $DragonFly: src/lib/libc/sys/acct.2,v 1.4 2006/05/26 19:39:37 swildner Exp $
35.\"
36.Dd April 17, 2004
37.Dt ACCT 2
38.Os
39.Sh NAME
40.Nm acct
41.Nd enable or disable process accounting
42.Sh LIBRARY
43.Lb libc
44.Sh SYNOPSIS
45.In unistd.h
46.Ft int
47.Fn acct "const char *file"
48.Sh DESCRIPTION
49The
50.Fn acct
51call enables or disables the collection of system accounting
52records.
53If the argument
54.Fa file
55is a nil pointer, accounting is disabled.
56If
57.Fa file
58is an
59.Em existing
60pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for
61every process initiated which terminates under normal
62conditions an accounting record is appended to
63.Fa file .
64Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots
65or other fatal system problems.
66Records for processes which never terminate can not be
67produced by
68.Fn acct .
69.Pp
70For more information on the record structure used by
71.Fn acct ,
72see
73.In sys/acct.h
74and
75.Xr acct 5 .
76.Pp
77This call is permitted only to the super-user.
78.Sh NOTES
79Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the
80accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when
81space once again becomes available.
82The values controlling this behaviour can be modified using the following
83.Xr sysctl 8
84variables:
85.Bl -tag -width ".Va kern.acct_chkfreq"
86.It Va kern.acct_chkfreq
87Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk
88space should be checked.
89.It Va kern.acct_resume
90The percentage of free disk space above which process
91accounting will resume.
92.It Va kern.acct_suspend
93The percentage of free disk space below which process
94accounting will suspend.
95.El
96.Sh RETURN VALUES
97On error -1 is returned.
98The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user.
99.Sh ERRORS
100.Fn Acct
101will fail if one of the following is true:
102.Bl -tag -width Er
103.It Bq Er EPERM
104The caller is not the super-user.
105.It Bq Er ENOTDIR
106A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
107.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
108A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters,
109or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters.
110.It Bq Er ENOENT
111The named file does not exist.
112.It Bq Er EACCES
113Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix,
114or the path name is not a regular file.
115.It Bq Er ELOOP
116Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
117.It Bq Er EROFS
118The named file resides on a read-only file system.
119.It Bq Er EFAULT
120.Fa File
121points outside the process's allocated address space.
122.It Bq Er EIO
123An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
124.El
125.Sh SEE ALSO
126.Xr acct 5 ,
127.Xr accton 8 ,
128.Xr sa 8
129.Sh HISTORY
130An
131.Fn acct
132function call appeared in
133.At v7 .
134