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.