acct(2)                       System Calls Manual                      acct(2)

NAME
       acct - switch process accounting on or off

LIBRARY
       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       int acct(const char *_Nullable path);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       acct():
           Since glibc 2.21:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE
           In glibc 2.19 and 2.20:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
           Up to and including glibc 2.19:
               _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION
       The acct() system call enables or disables process accounting.  If
       called with the pathname of an existing file as its argument,
       accounting is turned on, and records for each terminating process are
       appended to the file as it terminates.  An argument of NULL causes
       accounting to be turned off.

RETURN VALUE
       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set to indicate the error.

ERRORS
       EACCES Write permission is denied for the specified file, or search
              permission is denied for one of the directories in the path
              prefix of path (see also path_resolution(7)), or path is not a
              regular file.

       EFAULT path points outside your accessible address space.

       EIO    Error writing to the file path.

       EISDIR path is a directory.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving path.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              path was too long.

       ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been
              reached.

       ENOENT The specified path does not exist.

       ENOMEM Out of memory.

       ENOSYS BSD process accounting has not been enabled when the operating
              system kernel was compiled.  The kernel configuration parameter
              controlling this feature is CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT.

       ENOTDIR
              A component used as a directory in path is not in fact a
              directory.

       EPERM  The calling process has insufficient privilege to enable process
              accounting.  On Linux, the CAP_SYS_PACCT capability is required.

       EROFS  path refers to a file on a read-only filesystem.

       EUSERS There are no more free file structures or we ran out of memory.

STANDARDS
       None.

HISTORY
       SVr4, 4.3BSD.

NOTES
       No accounting is produced for programs running when a system crash
       occurs.  In particular, nonterminating processes are never accounted
       for.

       The structure of the records written to the accounting file is
       described in acct(5).

SEE ALSO
       acct(5)

Linux man-pages 6.18              2025-05-17                           acct(2)