.\"	$OpenBSD: acct.2,v 1.12 2005/03/26 13:31:35 jmc Exp $
.\"	$NetBSD: acct.2,v 1.6 1995/02/27 12:31:47 cgd Exp $
.\"
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.\"     @(#)acct.2	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
.\"
.Dd June 4, 1993
.Dt ACCT 2
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm acct
.Nd enable or disable process accounting
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Fd #include <unistd.h>
.Ft int
.Fn acct "const char *file"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn acct
call enables or disables the collection of system accounting records.
If
.Fa file
is
.Dv NULL ,
accounting is disabled.
If
.Fa file
is an existing, NUL-terminated pathname, record collection is enabled
and for every process initiated which terminates under normal conditions
an accounting record is appended to
.Fa file .
Abnormal conditions of termination are reboots or other
fatal system problems.
Records for processes which never terminate can not be produced by
.Fn acct .
.Fn acct
is only available on kernels compiled with the
.Cm ACCOUNTING
option.
.Pp
For more information on the record structure used by
.Fn acct ,
see
.Pa /usr/include/sys/acct.h
and
.Xr acct 5 .
.Pp
This call is permitted only to the superuser.
.Sh NOTES
Accounting is automatically disabled when the file system the
accounting file resides on runs out of space; it is enabled when
space once again becomes available.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
On error \-1 is returned.
The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the superuser.
.Sh ERRORS
.Fn acct
will fail if one of the following is true:
.Bl -tag -width Er
.It Bq Er EPERM
The caller is not the superuser.
.It Bq Er ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
.It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG
A component of a pathname exceeded
.Dv {NAME_MAX}
characters, or an entire path name exceeded
.Dv {PATH_MAX}
characters.
.It Bq Er ENOENT
The named file does not exist.
.It Bq Er EACCES
Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix,
or the path name is not a regular file.
.It Bq Er ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.
.It Bq Er EROFS
The named file resides on a read-only file system.
.It Bq Er EFAULT
.Fa file
points outside the process's allocated address space.
.It Bq Er EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr acct 5 ,
.Xr accton 8 ,
.Xr sa 8
.Sh HISTORY
An
.Fn acct
function call appeared in
.At v7 .