1.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" %sccs.include.redist.man% 5.\" 6.\" @(#)acct.2 8.1 (Berkeley) 06/04/93 7.\" 8.Dd 9.Dt ACCT 2 10.Os BSD 4 11.Sh NAME 12.Nm acct 13.Nd enable or disable process accounting 14.Sh SYNOPSIS 15.Fd #include <unistd.h> 16.Ft int 17.Fn acct "const char *file" 18.Sh DESCRIPTION 19The 20.Fn acct 21call enables or disables the collection of system accounting 22records. 23If the argument 24.Fa file 25is a nil pointer, accounting is disabled. 26If 27.Fa file 28is an 29.Em existing 30pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for 31every process initiated which terminates under normal 32conditions an accounting record is appended to 33.Fa file . 34Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots 35or other fatal system problems. 36Records for processes which never terminate can not be 37produced by 38.Fn acct . 39.Pp 40For more information on the record structure used by 41.Fn acct , 42see 43.Pa /usr/include/sys/acct.h 44and 45.Xr acct 5 . 46.Pp 47This call is permitted only to the super-user. 48.Sh NOTES 49Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the 50accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when 51space once again becomes available. 52.Sh RETURN VALUES 53On error -1 is returned. 54The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. 55.Sh ERRORS 56.Fn Acct 57will fail if one of the following is true: 58.Bl -tag -width Er 59.It Bq Er EPERM 60The caller is not the super-user. 61.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 62A component of the path prefix is not a directory. 63.It Bq Er EINVAL 64The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set. 65.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG 66A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, 67or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters. 68.It Bq Er ENOENT 69The named file does not exist. 70.It Bq Er EACCES 71Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, 72or the path name is not a regular file. 73.It Bq Er ELOOP 74Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 75.It Bq Er EROFS 76The named file resides on a read-only file system. 77.It Bq Er EFAULT 78.Fa File 79points outside the process's allocated address space. 80.It Bq Er EIO 81An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. 82.El 83.Sh SEE ALSO 84.Xr acct 5 , 85.Xr sa 8 86.Sh HISTORY 87An 88.Nm 89function call appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. 90