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acct(FP)


acct -- format of per-process accounting file

Description

Files produced as a result of calling acct(S) have records in the form defined by <sys/acct.h>.

In ac_flag, the AFORK flag is turned on by each fork(S) and turned off by an exec(S). The ac_comm member is inherited from the parent process and is reset by any call to exec(S). Each time the system charges the process with a clock tick, it also adds the current process size to the ac_mem member, computed as follows:

(data size) + (text size) / (number of in-core processes using text)

The value of ac_mem/ac_stime can be viewed as an approximation to the mean process size, as modified by text-sharing.

Notes

The ac_mem value for a short-lived command gives little information about the actual size of the command, because ac_mem may be incremented while a different command (for example, the shell) is being executed by the process.

See also

acctcom(ADM), acct(S)

Standards conformance

acct is conformant with:

X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 3, 1989 .


© 2003 File Formats for Programming (FP)
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