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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | VERSIONS | STANDARDS | HISTORY | NOTES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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acct(5) File Formats Manual acct(5)
acct - process accounting file
#include <sys/acct.h>
If the kernel is built with the process accounting option enabled
(CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT), then calling acct(2) starts process
accounting, for example:
acct("/var/log/pacct");
When process accounting is enabled, the kernel writes a record to
the accounting file as each process on the system terminates.
This record contains information about the terminated process, and
is defined in <sys/acct.h> as follows:
#define ACCT_COMM 16
typedef u_int16_t comp_t;
struct acct {
char ac_flag; /* Accounting flags */
u_int16_t ac_uid; /* Accounting user ID */
u_int16_t ac_gid; /* Accounting group ID */
u_int16_t ac_tty; /* Controlling terminal */
u_int32_t ac_btime; /* Process creation time
(seconds since the Epoch) */
comp_t ac_utime; /* User CPU time */
comp_t ac_stime; /* System CPU time */
comp_t ac_etime; /* Elapsed time */
comp_t ac_mem; /* Average memory usage (kB) */
comp_t ac_io; /* Characters transferred (unused) */
comp_t ac_rw; /* Blocks read or written (unused) */
comp_t ac_minflt; /* Minor page faults */
comp_t ac_majflt; /* Major page faults */
comp_t ac_swaps; /* Number of swaps (unused) */
u_int32_t ac_exitcode; /* Process termination status
(see wait(2)) */
char ac_comm[ACCT_COMM+1];
/* Command name (basename of last
executed command; null-terminated) */
char ac_pad[X]; /* padding bytes */
};
enum { /* Bits that may be set in ac_flag field */
AFORK = 0x01, /* Has executed fork, but no exec */
ASU = 0x02, /* Used superuser privileges */
ACORE = 0x08, /* Dumped core */
AXSIG = 0x10 /* Killed by a signal */
};
The comp_t data type is a floating-point value consisting of a
3-bit, base-8 exponent, and a 13-bit mantissa. A value, c, of
this type can be converted to a (long) integer as follows:
v = (c & 0x1fff) << (((c >> 13) & 0x7) * 3);
The ac_utime, ac_stime, and ac_etime fields measure time in "clock
ticks"; divide these values by sysconf(_SC_CLK_TCK) to convert
them to seconds.
Version 3 accounting file format
Since Linux 2.6.8, an optional alternative version of the
accounting file can be produced if the CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT_V3
option is set when building the kernel. With this option is set,
the records written to the accounting file contain additional
fields, and the width of c_uid and ac_gid fields is widened from
16 to 32 bits (in line with the increased size of UID and GIDs in
Linux 2.4 and later). The records are defined as follows:
struct acct_v3 {
char ac_flag; /* Flags */
char ac_version; /* Always set to ACCT_VERSION (3) */
u_int16_t ac_tty; /* Controlling terminal */
u_int32_t ac_exitcode; /* Process termination status */
u_int32_t ac_uid; /* Real user ID */
u_int32_t ac_gid; /* Real group ID */
u_int32_t ac_pid; /* Process ID */
u_int32_t ac_ppid; /* Parent process ID */
u_int32_t ac_btime; /* Process creation time */
float ac_etime; /* Elapsed time */
comp_t ac_utime; /* User CPU time */
comp_t ac_stime; /* System time */
comp_t ac_mem; /* Average memory usage (kB) */
comp_t ac_io; /* Characters transferred (unused) */
comp_t ac_rw; /* Blocks read or written
(unused) */
comp_t ac_minflt; /* Minor page faults */
comp_t ac_majflt; /* Major page faults */
comp_t ac_swaps; /* Number of swaps (unused) */
char ac_comm[ACCT_COMM]; /* Command name */
};
Although it is present on most systems, it is not standardized,
and the details vary somewhat between systems.
None.
glibc 2.6.
Process accounting originated on BSD.
Records in the accounting file are ordered by termination time of
the process.
Up to and including Linux 2.6.9, a separate accounting record is
written for each thread created using the NPTL threading library;
since Linux 2.6.10, a single accounting record is written for the
entire process on termination of the last thread in the process.
The /proc/sys/kernel/acct file, described in proc(5), defines
settings that control the behavior of process accounting when disk
space runs low.
lastcomm(1), acct(2), accton(8), sa(8)
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.10.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ 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
Linux man-pages 6.10 2024-05-02 acct(5)
Pages that refer to this page: lastcomm(1), acct(2), user_namespaces(7), 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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