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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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AC(1) General Commands Manual AC(1)
ac - print statistics about users' connect time
ac [ -d | --daily-totals ] [ -y | --print-year ]
[ -p | --individual-totals ] [ people ]
[ -f | --file filename ] [ -a | --all-days ]
[ --complain ] [ --reboots ] [ --supplants ]
[ --timewarps ] [ --compatibility ]
[ --tw-leniency num ] [ --tw-suspicious num ]
[ -z | --print-zeros ] [ --debug ]
[ -V | --version ] [ -h | --help ]
ac prints out a report of connect time (in hours) based on the lo‐
gins/logouts in the current wtmp file. A total is also printed
out.
The accounting file wtmp is maintained by init(8) and login(1).
Neither ac nor login creates the wtmp if it doesn't exist, no ac‐
counting is done. To begin accounting, create the file with a
length of zero.
NOTE: The wtmp file can get really big, really fast. You might
want to trim it every once and a while.
GNU ac works nearly the same UNIX ac, though it's a little smarter
in several ways. You should therefore expect differences in the
output of GNU ac and the output of ac's on other systems. Use the
command info accounting to get additional information.
-d, --daily-totals
Print totals for each day rather than just one big total at
the end. The output looks like this:
Jul 3 total 1.17
Jul 4 total 2.10
Jul 5 total 8.23
Jul 6 total 2.10
Jul 7 total 0.30
-p, --individual-totals
Print time totals for each user in addition to the usual
everything-lumped-into-one value. It looks like:
bob 8.06
goff 0.60
maley 7.37
root 0.12
total 16.15
people Print out the sum total of the connect time used by all of
the users included in people. Note that people is a space
separated list of valid user names; wildcards are not al‐
lowed.
-f, --file filename
Read from the file filename instead of the system's wtmp
file.
--complain
When the wtmp file has a problem (a time-warp, missing
record, or whatever), print out an appropriate error.
--reboots
Reboot records are NOT written at the time of a reboot, but
when the system restarts; therefore, it is impossible to
know exactly when the reboot occurred. Users may have been
logged into the system at the time of the reboot, and many
ac's automatically count the time between the login and the
reboot record against the user (even though all of that
time shouldn't be, perhaps, if the system is down for a
long time, for instance). If you want to count this time,
include the flag. *For vanilla ac compatibility, include
this flag.*
--supplants
Sometimes, a logout record is not written for a specific
terminal, so the time that the last user accrued cannot be
calculated. If you want to include the time from the
user's login to the next login on the terminal (though
probably incorrect), include this you want to include the
time from the user's login to the next login on the termi‐
nal (though probably incorrect), include this flag. *For
vanilla ac compatibility, include this flag.*
--timewarps
Sometimes, entries in a wtmp file will suddenly jump back
into the past without a clock change record occurring. It
is impossible to know how long a user was logged in when
this occurs. If you want to count the time between the lo‐
gin and the time warp against the user, include this flag.
*For vanilla ac compatibility, include this flag.*
--compatibility
This is shorthand for typing out the three above options.
-a, --all-days
If we're printing daily totals, print a record for every
day instead of skipping intervening days where there is no
login activity. Without this flag, time accrued during
those intervening days gets listed under the next day where
there is login activity.
--tw-leniency num
Set the time warp leniency to num seconds. Records in wtmp
files might be slightly out of order (most notably when two
logins occur within a one-second period - the second one
gets written first). By default, this value is set to 60.
If the program notices this problem, time is not assigned
to users unless the --timewarps flag is used.
--tw-suspicious num
Set the time warp suspicious value to num seconds. If two
records in the wtmp file are farther than this number of
seconds apart, there is a problem with the wtmp file (or
your machine hasn't been used in a year). If the program
notices this problem, time is not assigned to users unless
the --timewarps flag is used.
-y, --print-year
Print year when displaying dates.
-z, --print-zeros
If a total for any category (save the grand total) is zero,
print it. The default is to suppress printing.
--debug
Print verbose internal information.
-V, --version
Print the version number of ac to standard output and quit.
-h, --help
Prints the usage string and default locations of system
files to standard output and exits.
wtmp
The system wide login record file. See wtmp(5) for further
details.
The GNU accounting utilities were written by Noel Cragg
<noel@gnu.ai.mit.edu>. The man page was adapted from the account‐
ing texinfo page by Susan Kleinmann <sgk@sgk.tiac.net>.
login(1), wtmp(5), init(8), sa(8)
This page is part of the psacct (process accounting utilities)
project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/acct/⟩. If you have a bug report for
this manual page, see ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/acct/⟩. This
page was obtained from the tarball acct-6.6.4.tar.gz fetched from
⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/acct/⟩ on 2025-02-02. If you discover any
rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
or you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
mail to man-pages@man7.org
2010 August 16 AC(1)
Pages that refer to this page: utmp(5), accton(8), sa(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-02-02 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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