1.\" $NetBSD: acct.2,v 1.16 2004/05/13 10:20:57 wiz Exp $ 2.\" 3.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 4.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 5.\" 6.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 7.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 8.\" are met: 9.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 11.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 12.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 13.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 14.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 15.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 16.\" without specific prior written permission. 17.\" 18.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 19.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 20.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 21.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 22.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 23.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 24.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 25.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 26.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 27.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 28.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 29.\" 30.\" @(#)acct.2 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 31.\" 32.Dd June 4, 1993 33.Dt ACCT 2 34.Os 35.Sh NAME 36.Nm acct 37.Nd enable or disable process accounting 38.Sh LIBRARY 39.Lb libc 40.Sh SYNOPSIS 41.In unistd.h 42.Ft int 43.Fn acct "const char *file" 44.Sh DESCRIPTION 45The 46.Fn acct 47call enables or disables the collection of system accounting 48records. 49If the argument 50.Fa file 51is a nil pointer, accounting is disabled. 52If 53.Fa file 54is an 55.Em existing 56pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for 57every process initiated which terminates under normal 58conditions an accounting record is appended to 59.Fa file . 60Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots 61or other fatal system problems. 62Records for processes which never terminate can not be 63produced by 64.Fn acct . 65.Pp 66For more information on the record structure used by 67.Fn acct , 68see 69.Pa /usr/include/sys/acct.h 70and 71.Xr acct 5 . 72.Pp 73This call is permitted only to the super-user. 74.Sh NOTES 75Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the 76accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when 77space once again becomes available. 78For this purpose, 79.Fn acct 80creates a kernel thread called 81.Dq acctwatch . 82.Sh RETURN VALUES 83On error \-1 is returned. 84The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. 85.Sh ERRORS 86.Fn acct 87will fail if one of the following is true: 88.Bl -tag -width Er 89.It Bq Er EPERM 90The caller is not the super-user. 91.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 92A component of the path prefix is not a directory. 93.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG 94A component of a pathname exceeded 95.Dv {NAME_MAX} 96characters, or an entire path name exceeded 97.Dv {PATH_MAX} 98characters. 99.It Bq Er ENOENT 100The named file does not exist. 101.It Bq Er EACCES 102Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, 103or the path name is not a regular file. 104.It Bq Er ELOOP 105Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 106.It Bq Er EROFS 107The named file resides on a read-only file system. 108.It Bq Er EFAULT 109.Fa file 110points outside the process's allocated address space. 111.It Bq Er EIO 112An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. 113.El 114Also, 115.Fn acct 116fails if failed to create kernel thread described above. 117See 118.Xr fork 2 119for 120.Va errno 121value. 122.Sh SEE ALSO 123.Xr fork 2 , 124.Xr acct 5 , 125.Xr sa 8 126.Sh HISTORY 127An 128.Fn acct 129function call appeared in 130.At v7 . 131