Disk Accounting

Disk accounting enables you to gather and format the following data about the files each user has on disks:

• User name and user ID of the user

• Number of blocks that are used by the user's files

This data is collected by the /usr/lib/acct/dodisk shell script at intervals that are determined by the entry you add to the /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root file. In turn, the dodisk script invokes the acctdisk and acctdusg commands. These commands gather disk usage by login name.

Information gathered by running the dodisk script is stored in the /var/adm/acct/nite/disktacct file. This information is overwritten the next time the dodisk script is run. Therefore, avoid running the dodisk script twice in the same day.

The acctdusg command might overcharge for files that are written randomly, which can create holes in the files. This problem occurs because the acctdusg command does not read the indirect blocks of a file when determining the file size. Rather, the acctdusg command determines the file size by checking the current file size value in the file's inode.