.TH ACCT 2 "13 February 1983" .UC 4 .SH NAME acct \- turn accounting on or off .SH SYNOPSIS .nf .ft B acct(file) char *file; .ft R .fi .SH DESCRIPTION The system is prepared to write a record in an accounting .I file for each process as it terminates. This call, with a null-terminated string naming an existing file as argument, turns on accounting; records for each terminating process are appended to .IR file . An argument of 0 causes accounting to be turned off. .PP The accounting file format is given in .IR acct (5). .PP This call is permitted only to the super-user. .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 VALUE On error \-1 is returned. The file must exist and the call may be exercised only by the super-user. It is erroneous to try to turn on accounting when it is already on. .SH ERRORS .I Acct will fail if one of the following is true: .TP 15 [EPERM] The caller is not the super-user. .TP 15 [EPERM] The pathname contains a character with the high-order bit set. .TP 15 [ENOTDIR] A component of the path prefix is not a directory. .TP 15 [ENOENT] The named file does not exist. .TP 15 [EISDIR] The named file is a directory. .TP 15 [EROFS] The named file resides on a read-only file system. .TP 15 [EFAULT] .I File points outside the process's allocated address space. .TP 15 [ELOOP] Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname. .TP 15 [EACCES] The file is a character or block special file. .SH "SEE ALSO" acct(5), sa(8) .SH BUGS No accounting is produced for programs running when a crash occurs. In particular nonterminating programs are never accounted for.