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ACCT(2)			      System Calls Manual		       ACCT(2)

NAME
       acct -- enable or disable process accounting

LIBRARY
       Standard	C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
       #include	<unistd.h>

       int
       acct(const char *file);

DESCRIPTION
       The acct() system call enables or disables the collection of system ac-
       counting	 records.   If the argument file is a null pointer, accounting
       is disabled.  If	file is	an existing pathname (null-terminated),	record
       collection is enabled and for every process initiated which  terminates
       under  normal conditions	an accounting record is	appended to file.  Ab-
       normal conditions of termination	are  reboots  or  other	 fatal	system
       problems.   Records  for	processes which	never terminate	cannot be pro-
       duced by	acct().

       For more	information on	the  record  structure	used  by  acct(),  see
       <sys/acct.h> and	acct(5).

       This call is permitted only to the super-user.

NOTES
       Accounting  is automatically disabled when the file system the account-
       ing file	resides	on runs	out of space; it is enabled  when  space  once
       again  becomes available.  The values controlling this behaviour	can be
       modified	using the following sysctl(8) variables:

       kern.acct_chkfreq  Specifies the	frequency (in seconds) with which free
			  disk space should be checked.

       kern.acct_resume	  The  percentage  of  free  disk  space  above	 which
			  process accounting will resume.

       kern.acct_suspend  The  percentage  of  free  disk  space  below	 which
			  process accounting will suspend.

RETURN VALUES
       On error	-1 is returned.	 The file must exist and the call may be exer-
       cised only by the super-user.

ERRORS
       The acct() system call 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.

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

       [ENOENT]		  The named file does not exist.

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

       [ELOOP]		  Too many symbolic links were encountered  in	trans-
			  lating the pathname.

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

       [EFAULT]		  The file argument points outside the process's allo-
			  cated	address	space.

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

       [EINTEGRITY]	  Corrupted data was detected while reading  from  the
			  file system.

SEE ALSO
       acct(5),	accton(8), sa(8)

HISTORY
       The acct() function appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

FreeBSD	13.2			March 30, 2020			       ACCT(2)

NAME | LIBRARY | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTES | RETURN VALUES | ERRORS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY

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