What is System Accounting?

The SunOS 5.8 system accounting software is a set of programs that enables you to collect and record data about user connect time, CPU time charged to processes, and disk usage. Once this data is collected, you can generate reports and charge fees for system usage.

The accounting programs can be used for:

• Monitoring system usage

• Troubleshooting

• Locating and correcting performance problems

• Maintaining system security

After they're set up, the system accounting programs run mostly on their own.

Accounting Components

The accounting software provides C language programs and shell scripts that organize data into summary files and reports. These programs reside in the /usr/adm/acct and /usr/lib/acct directories.

Daily accounting can help you do four types of auditing:

• Connect

• Process

• Disk

• Fee calculations

How Accounting Works

Setting up automatic accounting involves putting the accounting startup script into crontab files so it can be started automatically by cron.

The following is an overview of how accounting works.

1. Between system startup and shutdown, raw data about system use (such as user logins, running processes, and data storage) are collected in accounting files.

2. Periodically (usually once a day), the /usr/lib/acct/runacct program processes the various accounting files and produces both cumulative summary files and daily accounting reports. The daily reports are printed by the /usr/lib/acct/prdaily program.

3. Monthly, the administrator can process and print the cumulative summary files generated by runacct by executing the monacct program. The summary reports produced by monacct provide an efficient means for billing users on a monthly or other fiscal basis.

See Chapter 31, Managing System Accounting (Tasks) for instructions on setting up the accounting software. See Chapter 32, System Accounting (Reference) for reference information about the different accounting features.