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.\" @(#)acct.2 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 29.\" 30.Dd March 30, 2020 31.Dt ACCT 2 32.Os 33.Sh NAME 34.Nm acct 35.Nd enable or disable process accounting 36.Sh LIBRARY 37.Lb libc 38.Sh SYNOPSIS 39.In unistd.h 40.Ft int 41.Fn acct "const char *file" 42.Sh DESCRIPTION 43The 44.Fn acct 45system call enables or disables the collection of system accounting 46records. 47If the argument 48.Fa file 49is a null pointer, accounting is disabled. 50If 51.Fa file 52is an 53.Em existing 54pathname (null-terminated), record collection is enabled and for 55every process initiated which terminates under normal 56conditions an accounting record is appended to 57.Fa file . 58Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots 59or other fatal system problems. 60Records for processes which never terminate cannot be 61produced by 62.Fn acct . 63.Pp 64For more information on the record structure used by 65.Fn acct , 66see 67.In sys/acct.h 68and 69.Xr acct 5 . 70.Pp 71This call is permitted only to the super-user. 72.Sh NOTES 73Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the 74accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when 75space once again becomes available. 76The values controlling this behaviour can be modified using the following 77.Xr sysctl 8 78variables: 79.Bl -tag -width ".Va kern.acct_chkfreq" 80.It Va kern.acct_chkfreq 81Specifies the frequency (in seconds) with which free disk 82space should be checked. 83.It Va kern.acct_resume 84The percentage of free disk space above which process 85accounting will resume. 86.It Va kern.acct_suspend 87The percentage of free disk space below which process 88accounting will suspend. 89.El 90.Sh RETURN VALUES 91On error -1 is returned. 92The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. 93.Sh ERRORS 94The 95.Fn acct 96system call will fail if one of the following is true: 97.Bl -tag -width Er 98.It Bq Er EPERM 99The caller is not the super-user. 100.It Bq Er ENOTDIR 101A component of the path prefix is not a directory. 102.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG 103A component of a pathname exceeded 255 characters, 104or an entire path name exceeded 1023 characters. 105.It Bq Er ENOENT 106The named file does not exist. 107.It Bq Er EACCES 108Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix, 109or the path name is not a regular file. 110.It Bq Er ELOOP 111Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. 112.It Bq Er EROFS 113The named file resides on a read-only file system. 114.It Bq Er EFAULT 115The 116.Fa file 117argument 118points outside the process's allocated address space. 119.It Bq Er EIO 120An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system. 121.It Bq Er EINTEGRITY 122Corrupted data was detected while reading from the file system. 123.El 124.Sh SEE ALSO 125.Xr acct 5 , 126.Xr accton 8 , 127.Xr sa 8 128.Sh HISTORY 129The 130.Fn acct 131function appeared in 132.At v7 . 133