1ACCT(2)                    Linux Programmer's Manual                   ACCT(2)
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NAME

6       acct - switch process accounting on or off
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SYNOPSIS

9       #include <unistd.h>
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11       int acct(const char *filename);
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13   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
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15       acct():
16           Since glibc 2.21:
17               _DEFAULT_SOURCE
18           In glibc 2.19 and 2.20:
19               _DEFAULT_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
20           Up to and including glibc 2.19:
21               _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
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DESCRIPTION

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

31       On  success,  zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
32       set appropriately.
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ERRORS

35       EACCES Write permission is denied for the  specified  file,  or  search
36              permission is denied for one of the directories in the path pre‐
37              fix of filename (see also path_resolution(7)),  or  filename  is
38              not a regular file.
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40       EFAULT filename points outside your accessible address space.
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42       EIO    Error writing to the file filename.
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44       EISDIR filename is a directory.
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46       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving filename.
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48       ENAMETOOLONG
49              filename was too long.
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51       ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been
52              reached.
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54       ENOENT The specified file does not exist.
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56       ENOMEM Out of memory.
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58       ENOSYS BSD process accounting has not been enabled when  the  operating
59              system  kernel was compiled.  The kernel configuration parameter
60              controlling this feature is CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT.
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62       ENOTDIR
63              A component used as a directory in filename is  not  in  fact  a
64              directory.
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66       EPERM  The calling process has insufficient privilege to enable process
67              accounting.  On Linux, the CAP_SYS_PACCT capability is required.
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69       EROFS  filename refers to a file on a read-only filesystem.
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71       EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of memory.
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CONFORMING TO

74       SVr4, 4.3BSD (but not POSIX).
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NOTES

77       No accounting is produced for programs  running  when  a  system  crash
78       occurs.   In  particular,  nonterminating processes are never accounted
79       for.
80
81       The structure  of  the  records  written  to  the  accounting  file  is
82       described in acct(5).
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SEE ALSO

85       acct(5)
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COLOPHON

88       This  page  is  part of release 4.15 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
89       description of the project, information about reporting bugs,  and  the
90       latest     version     of     this    page,    can    be    found    at
91       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
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95Linux                             2016-03-15                           ACCT(2)
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