Process Accounting

Even if process accounting facilities have been compiled into your kernel, you might not have the user commands for process accounting installed on your system. If this is the case, and you're looking to get started quickly, first try finding the process accounting commands for your specific Linux distribution.

The package for your distribution likely is configured to place log files in the appropriate location for your system's setup, making installation much simpler. On my Red Hat 7.2 distribution CDs, I found the ps-acct-6.3.2-9.i386.rpm on the second disk, in the directory. If you use the gnorpm graphical install tool, the package will appear in the Packages/Applications/System hierarchy. On a Debian system, install the acct package.

If you're installing from source, two versions of the utilities are available. One version, under the BSD license, is available at www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/admin/accounts. The filename will be similar to acct-1.3.73.tar.gz, with small differences depending on the version number. In order to get these utilities to compile on my system, I had to edit the lastcomm.c file and comment out the prototype for the strcpy function.

There is also a process accounting utilities set written by Noel Cragg and licensed under the GNU GPL. It's available at www.gnu.org/directory/System_administration/Monitoring/acct.html.

The exact process accounting commands installed on your system will vary depending on the particular package you've chosen. Table 1 shows a list of the commands you could encounter and the purpose of each.

Table 1. Process Accounting Commands

Let's take a quick look at how to install the GNU Accounting Utilities on a system. Use the following commands:

tar zxvf acct_6.3.5.orig.tar.gz
cd acct-6.3.5
./configure
make
su
make install

A few basic process accounting commands have now been installed on your system. You're now ready to turn on the accounting and start using the commands.

In this brief introduction to using the process accounting commands, I look at two commands, accton and lastcomm. I've chosen these two commands because they are standard on all process accounting versions.

The accton command switches process accounting on or off. If a filename is specified on the command line, that filename will be used to log the process accounting information. If no argument is specified, process accounting will be switched off.

To start the process accounting facilities on your system, su to become root. Make sure that the log file exists by performing a touch on the desired location. Example:

touch  /var/log/pacct

Then type the full path to your accton program (usually /usr/sbin/accton or /sbin/accton) followed by the filename. Example:

/sbin/accton /var/log/pacct

Now that you've switched on the accounting, run a few normal commands as an ordinary user to get some data for the lastcomm command, which you'll use next. When you're finished, su to root once more, and run /usr/sbin/accton or /sbin/accton with no arguments to switch off process accounting.

The lastcomm command prints information contained in the accounting log files, with the most recent record printed first. You can use the -f command-line option to specify a filename. Typically, the process accounting log file on a system is set up so that only root can read it. This command is then executed by root, for example:

lastcomm -f /var/log/pacct

When you type in the above command, the output is similar to this:

id         root   stdin  0.00 secs Mon Jul 22 12:41
xauth   S  root   stdin  0.00 secs Mon Jul 22 12:41
xauth   S  keithg stdin  0.00 secs Mon Jul 22 12:41
xauth   S  keithg stdin  0.01 secs Mon Jul 22 12:41
bubbles  X keithg ??     0.01 secs Mon Jul 22 12:33
ls         keithg ??     0.01 secs Mon Jul 22 12:26
bash     X keithg ??     0.03 secs Mon Jul 22 08:25

lastcomm -f /var/log/pacct --command su

su      root     ??      0.01 secs Mon Jul 22 10:52
su      keithg   stdout  0.05 secs Mon Jul 22 09:32
su      keithg   stdout  0.00 secs Mon Jul 22 09:17
su      root     ??      0.00 secs Mon Jul 22 03:29
su      keithg   tty1    0.00 secs Sun Jul 21 19:49