acct(2) — Linux manual page

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

acct(2)                    System Calls Manual                   acct(2)

NAME         top

       acct - switch process accounting on or off

LIBRARY         top

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <unistd.h>

       int acct(const char *_Nullable filename);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see
   feature_test_macros(7)):

       acct():
           Since glibc 2.21:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE
           In glibc 2.19 and 2.20:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
           Up to and including glibc 2.19:
               _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION         top

       The acct() system call enables or disables process accounting.
       If called with the name of an existing file as its argument,
       accounting is turned on, and records for each terminating process
       are appended to filename as it terminates.  An argument of NULL
       causes accounting to be turned off.

RETURN VALUE         top

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and
       errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS         top

       EACCES Write permission is denied for the specified file, or
              search permission is denied for one of the directories in
              the path prefix of filename (see also path_resolution(7)),
              or filename is not a regular file.

       EFAULT filename points outside your accessible address space.

       EIO    Error writing to the file filename.

       EISDIR filename is a directory.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
              filename.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              filename was too long.

       ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files
              has been reached.

       ENOENT The specified file does not exist.

       ENOMEM Out of memory.

       ENOSYS BSD process accounting has not been enabled when the
              operating system kernel was compiled.  The kernel
              configuration parameter controlling this feature is
              CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT.

       ENOTDIR
              A component used as a directory in filename is not in fact
              a directory.

       EPERM  The calling process has insufficient privilege to enable
              process accounting.  On Linux, the CAP_SYS_PACCT
              capability is required.

       EROFS  filename refers to a file on a read-only filesystem.

       EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of
              memory.

STANDARDS         top

       None.

HISTORY         top

       SVr4, 4.3BSD.

NOTES         top

       No accounting is produced for programs running when a system
       crash occurs.  In particular, nonterminating processes are never
       accounted for.

       The structure of the records written to the accounting file is
       described in acct(5).

SEE ALSO         top

       acct(5)

COLOPHON         top

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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-05-02                        acct(2)

Pages that refer to this page: syscalls(2)acct(5)capabilities(7)feature_test_macros(7)