ACCT(5)

NAME
acct - execution accounting file

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/acct.h>

DESCRIPTION
The kernel maintains the following acct information structure for all processes. If a process terminates, and accounting is enabled, the kernel calls the acct(2) function call to prepare and append the record to the accounting file.

    #define AC_COMM_LEN 16
    /*
     * Accounting structure version 3 (current).
     * The first byte is always zero.
     * Time units are microseconds.
     */
    struct acctv3 {
    	uint8_t  ac_zero;		/* zero identifies new version */
    	uint8_t  ac_version;		/* record version number */
    	uint16_t ac_len;		/* record length */
    	char	  ac_comm[AC_COMM_LEN];	/* command name */
    	float	  ac_utime;		/* user time */
    	float	  ac_stime;		/* system time */
    	float	  ac_etime;		/* elapsed time */
    	time_t	  ac_btime;		/* starting time */
    	uid_t	  ac_uid;		/* user id */
    	gid_t	  ac_gid;		/* group id */
    	float	  ac_mem;		/* average memory usage */
    	float	  ac_io;		/* count of IO blocks */
    	__dev_t   ac_tty;		/* controlling tty */
    	uint16_t ac_len2;		/* record length */
    	union {
    		uint32_t  ac_align;	/* force v1 compatible alignment */
    #define	AFORK	0x01			/* forked but not exec'ed */
    /* ASU is no longer supported */
    #define	ASU	0x02			/* used super-user permissions */
    #define	ACOMPAT	0x04			/* used compatibility mode */
    #define	ACORE	0x08			/* dumped core */
    #define	AXSIG	0x10			/* killed by a signal */
    #define ANVER	0x20			/* new record version */
    		uint8_t  ac_flag;	/* accounting flags */
    	} ac_trailer;
    #define ac_flagx ac_trailer.ac_flag
    };

If a terminated process was created by an execve(2), the name of the executed file (at most ten characters of it) is saved in the field ac_comm and its status is saved by setting one of more of the following flags in ac_flag: AFORK, ACOMPAT, ACORE and ASIG. ASU is no longer supported. ANVER is always set in the above structure.

SEE ALSO
lastcomm(1), acct(2), execve(2), sa(8)

HISTORY
A acct file format appeared in AT&T UNIX. The current record format was introduced on May 2007. It is backwards compatible with the previous format, which is still documented in <sys/acct.h> and supported by lastcomm(1) and sa(8).