1.\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1991, 1993 2.\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 5.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions 6.\" are met: 7.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 8.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 9.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 10.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 11.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 12.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors 13.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software 14.\" without specific prior written permission. 15.\" 16.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND 17.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE 18.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE 19.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE 20.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL 21.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS 22.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) 23.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT 24.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY 25.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF 26.\" SUCH DAMAGE. 27.\" 28.Dd March 30, 2020 29.Dt ACCT 2 30.Os 31.Sh NAME 32.Nm acct 33.Nd enable or disable process accounting 34.Sh LIBRARY 35.Lb libc 36.Sh SYNOPSIS 37.In unistd.h 38.Ft int 39.Fn acct "const char *file" 40.Sh DESCRIPTION 41The 42.Fn acct 43system call enables or disables the collection of system accounting 44records. 45If the argument 46.Fa file 47is a null pointer, accounting is disabled. 48If 49.Fa file 50is an 51.Em existing 52pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for 53every process initiated which terminates under normal 54conditions an accounting record is appended to 55.Fa file . 56Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots 57or other fatal system problems. 58Records for processes which never terminate cannot be 59produced by 60.Fn acct . 61.Pp 62For more information on the record structure used by 63.Fn acct , 64see 65.In sys/acct.h 66and 67.Xr acct 5 . 68.Pp 69This call is permitted only to the super-user. 70.Sh NOTES 71Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the 72accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when 73space once again becomes available. 74The values controlling this behaviour can be modified using the following 75.Xr sysctl 8 76variables: 77.Bl -tag -width ".Va kern.acct_chkfreq" 78.It Va kern.acct_chkfreq 79Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk 80space should be checked. 81.It Va kern.acct_resume 82The percentage of free disk space above which process 83accounting will resume. 84.It Va kern.acct_suspend 85The percentage of free disk space below which process 86accounting will suspend. 87.El 88.Sh RETURN VALUES 89On error -1 is returned. 90The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. 91.Sh ERRORS 92The 93.Fn acct 94system call will fail if one of the following is true: 95.Bl -tag -width Er 96.It Bq Er EPERM 97The caller is not the super-user. 98.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 99A component of the path prefix is not a directory. 100.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG 101A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, 102or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters. 103.It Bq Er ENOENT 104The named file does not exist. 105.It Bq Er EACCES 106Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, 107or the path name is not a regular file. 108.It Bq Er ELOOP 109Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 110.It Bq Er EROFS 111The named file resides on a read-only file system. 112.It Bq Er EFAULT 113The 114.Fa file 115argument 116points outside the process's allocated address space. 117.It Bq Er EIO 118An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. 119.It Bq Er EINTEGRITY 120Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system. 121.El 122.Sh SEE ALSO 123.Xr acct 5 , 124.Xr accton 8 , 125.Xr sa 8 126.Sh HISTORY 127The 128.Fn acct 129function appeared in 130.At v7 . 131