ACCT(2)                              BSD                               ACCT(2)



NAME
     acct - turn accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS
     acct(file)
     char *file;

DESCRIPTION
     The system is prepared to write a record in an accounting file for each
     process as it terminates.  This call, with a null terminated string
     naming an existing file as argument, turns on accounting; records for
     each terminating process are appended to file.  An argument of 0 causes
     accounting to be turned off.

     The accounting file format is given in acct(5).

     This call is permitted only to the super-user.

NOTES
     Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the accounting
     file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when space once again
     becomes available.

DIAGNOSTICS
     On error -1 is returned.  The file must exist and the call may be
     exercised only by the super-user.  It is erroneous to try to turn on
     accounting when it is already on.

ERRORS
     acct will fail if one of the following is true:

     [EPERM]        The caller is not the super-user.

     [ENOTDIR]      A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

     [EINVAL]       The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit
                    set.

     [ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, or an
                    entire pathname exceeded 1023 characters.

     [ENOENT]       The named file does not exist.

     [EACCES]       Search permission is denied for a component of the path
                    prefix, or the pathname is not a regular file.

     [ELOOP]        Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating
                    the pathname.

     [EROFS]        The named file resides on a read-only file system.

     [EFAULT]       file points outside the process' allocated address space.

     [EIO]          An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the
                    file system.

SEE ALSO
     acct(5), sa(8)

BUGS
     No accounting is produced for programs running when a crash occurs.  In

     particular non-terminating programs are never accounted for.