ACCT(2) 		   Linux Programmers Manual		      ACCT(2)



NAME
       acct - switch process accounting on or off

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

       int acct(const char *filename);

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

       acct(): _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION
       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
       On  success,  zero is returned.	On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EACCES Write permission is denied for the  specified  file,  or	search
	      permission is denied for one of the directories in the path pre
	      fix 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 limit on the total number  of	open  files  has  been
	      reached.

       ENOENT The specified filename 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 file system.

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

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4, 4.3BSD (but not POSIX).

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

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

SEE ALSO
       acct(5)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of	the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  2008-06-16			       ACCT(2)